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Software to Support Human Rights

An anonymous reader writes "Some software rollouts have lives hanging in the balance. Human rights workers in massacre zones from El Salvador to Kosovo face prying eyes peering into their address books and logs, who follow up with bullets and poison gas. One project, Martus, takes these hostile environments into account: a leak can get whole families killed. They use encryption, distributed backup, and other techniques designed to survive the ultimate corrosive environment: vindictive armies in countrysides in the throes of war. The source code is open, to allow meaningful contributions from anyone willing to help. These people bet their lives on open source and private data. The sponsor organization, Benetech in Silicon Valley, funds projects that arm global rights workers, and people under siege, with communications tools that counterbalance the overwhelming force used to exterminate everything "Free"."

4 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Just wondering sonething... by Altima(BoB) · · Score: 3, Funny

    If the encryption software is open source, doesn't that mean that hostiles who want to break the encryption can use the source to make sonething to counter the encryption?

    I have a vague idea on why that's not so, but nothing definate. I heard it being compared to trying to put a sausage into a meat grinder backwards to make a pig.

    --
    Yup...
  2. Misuse of drm/palladium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    If Microsoft remains as unethical as it is, it could sell palladium technology to rouge countries to help with human right's violations. If you were caught trying to crack it (which would be obvious), you would get shot!

    More reasons to stop palladium, as it could be abused like this.

  3. Re:open source dangerous! by Krapangor · · Score: 4, Funny
    How carefully do people look over contributed code before including it?

    Not often enough:
    einstien@mensa> grep -e "31337|h4x0r|0wned|phear|ph34r|r00tk17|sex|pr0n|po rn" -l -r /usr/src/Linux/* | wc -l

    237

    --
    Owner of a Mensa membership card.
  4. Re:open source dangerous! by mrogers · · Score: 3, Funny
    The poor example from above is pulling words from the comments - and those contain the foulest language imaginable.

    Hey, Finnish isn't that bad.