Did MS Lobbying Stop NSA Work On SELinux?

inquisitive points to this CNET story on how George Wash Univ. may help Linux gain certification under the Common Criteria, certification required for software to be used in some sensitive government roles. In the same story, though, is an interesting quote from another effort at bringing GPL'd software to the public sector: "'We didn't fully understand the consequences of releasing software under the GPL (General Public License),' said Dick Schafer, deputy director of the NSA. 'We received a lot of loud complaints regarding our efforts with SE Linux.'" Sources familiar with events said that aggressive Microsoft lobbying efforts have contributed to a halt on any further work. 'Microsoft was worried that the NSA's releasing open-source software would compete with American proprietary software,' said a source familiar with the complaints against the NSA who asked not to be identified."

Comments

It's a new concept...

[Demon-Xanth]

...called competition.
'Microsoft was worried that the NSA's releasing open- source software would compete with American proprietary software,'

Apparantly MS is worried that it'll catch on.

Re:It's a new concept...

[paladin_tom]

The issue here that made the U.S. government listen is that the "open-source software would compete with American proprietary software." The article states clearly that "Many complaints criticized the agency for providing the fruits of research to everyone, not just U.S. companies, and thus hurting American business."

This is another example of American government's actions being fuelled by a desire to help American businesses to the detriment of individual freedom, similar to the DCMA.

That's scary

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Think about it folks.

We have Microsoft telling the NSA what to do. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Or maybe it's one of Bill's minions I hear breathing over the phone line?

yes....

[teslatug]

'Microsoft was worried that the NSA's releasing open-source software would compete with American proprietary software'

Wasn't that the whole point? The existing software wasn't secure enough so they had to provide some software that would be.

If I were a rich man.....

[bogie]

It wouldn't surprise me and goes in line with their current effort of "advising" the government on how linux is evil. Remember Corel dropping linux? Yes the linux desktop was a tough market, but really there is no doubt it was a quid pro quo transaction.

Also what's with MS giving its software away for Free to a different government every week? Its a clear pattern designed to make sure noone can possibly compete. How are they even allowed to do this? I mean its not like they are some cash strapped competitor with no market share looking to get an edge. They are a convicted monopolist who somehow continues to walk between the raindrops and "get away with murder" right out in the open!

Microsoft: threat to national security

[coyote-san]

I'm not surprised Microsoft lobbied the NSA....

I'm surprised they listened. Didn't Alchin, senior Microsoft executive, recently testify (in the anti-trust case, IIRC) that Microsoft software is so poorly designed and/or implemented that full disclosure of the API would inevitably result in the death of many Americans? (That is, after all, what "national security" ultimately comes down to.)

Maybe Microsoft has a point that the NSA's work with SELinux hurts the proprietary software manufacturers, but by Microsoft's own testimony it should be out of the running for all future contracts anyway. I don't care about certification, when a senior exec testifies in court that using his product poses a threat to national security I want the procurement officials to pay attention!

(On a related note, I WILL be asking the Congressional candidates this election cycle what they plan to do about the Federal software procurement cycle in light of senior Microsoft executives admitting that the quality is so poor that it threatens the national security. Microsoft has made it's values clear - $40 billion in the bank is more important than lives - and I want to make sure that my representatives make our values as a country clear. I don't want to force governments to only use OSS software, but I have no patience for excuses from companies sitting on cash reserves larger than the GDP of many nations!)

Re:Government competition

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I refute your statement thus:

First - there is no product from Microsoft that is in direct competition. There will be no product for the forseeable future.

Second - The NSA would require the source code for whatever system in deploys. It would have to component test all of the subsystems, and ensure that no new bugs are introduced with new features. This flies in the face of the Upgrade Early, Upgrade Often mentalility an M$. (NASA users 486's in the space program, not to be cheap, but because they are a known quantity.)

Third - What the government produces, all competitors share equally. What microsoft produces, it keeps to itself.

So much for non-Microsoft desktops for the DoD

[Mastos]

In the Department of Defense, desktops and servers have to go through a NSA lockdown of the operating system before they can go into production. If you wanted to run linux on your desktop, the first question they ask is what does the NSA say about it.

While there are lockdown procedures for Linux from what I understand, having an NSA secure version of linux would have gone a long way to validating the os from the information assurance people. I hate to be forced to use Winx for _security_ reasons. :(

Don

Should the Government Compete w/ Private Industry?

[Skjellifetti]

Years ago the University Ag Campus where I went to school had a meat shop where you could get cheap beef/poultry/pork, etc. These were animals that had been raised on the Ag Campus farms for research and teaching and were no longer of use in whatever project. But they got into hot water with the Krogers supermarket chain because they were a gov't entity competing with private enterprise. NSA's Linux enhancements are no different. It isn't clear to me that MS is in the wrong here. Gov't should not be writing GPLd software that cannot be used in proprietary applications. A BSD style license would be much better. And such software efforts should be relegated to research only and not be attempts to build production ready software.

To serve and protect whom?

[Dan Crash]

When you think about it, the government's only real job is to defend the rights and freedoms of its citizens.

But wasn't that *exactly* what the NSA was doing by working on Security-Enhanced Linux? Defending your rights and freedoms by making sure the computers on which they depend are more secure? Should they be entrusting this job to corporate America, instead?

Second thing: What should happen to software that the government creates? Should it never be released to the public, left to sit and wallow as a waste of our tax dollars? Aren't we better off by having more choices in the marketplace instead of less?

(Wow -- every sentence a question.)

Re:To serve and protect whom?

[DavidTC]

What the hell is the point of that? The NSA employees hundreds of computer security experts. Outsourcing is possibly the stupidist possible suggestion you could make.

Working on security is half the NSA's job. (The other half being working on encryption.) They chose to work on the security of Linux, because they use it. Because they want to see their changes incorperated into the kernel (So they don't have to keep updating it.), they gave it back to the community. They didn't just decide to start a computer programming business for no reason, they want security in their OSes and they use Linux. (Possibly because that's code they know doesn't have backdoors.)

This isn't the NSA trying to compete with MS, this is the NSA trying to make things simpler for itself by putting security, as default, in the OS it uses, so it doesn't have to patch the source each time, and more people will look at the code and find mistakes. (The NSA doesn't fall for security though obscurity. They are well aware the best way to make something security is to hand a copy to a million people and ask them to break it.)

infrastructure

[SethJohnson]

Therefore, when the government interferes with free enterprise, it's interfering with the rights of its citizens.

By providing a free operating system, the US govt. is NOT 'interfering with the rights of its citizens any more than:

1. The public libraries interfere with the private bookstores' rights.
2. Police officers interfere with private security firms' rights.
3. Public water fountains interfere with bottled water vendors' rights.
4. Free public skateparks threaten private Van's-owned parks.

I think it's high-time the US govt. supported an open-source OS project. Though backwards in its perspective on human rights, China is lightyears ahead in its thinking on this subject. If we had a national open-source OS that was used in every government office and available to citizens for free, it would be a dozen times more powerful of a punishment than any wrist-slapping the DOJ is going to give to MS for it's anti-trust crimes.

Seth