Open Source Enables Terrorist States

chill writes "Where to begin? OpenBSD Journal has a couple of update articles on the business of DARPA cancelling POSSE and OpenBSD's grant. And here is a message from Theo de Raadt, the OpenBSD big cheese, with a quote from a military spokesman. How does '...due to world events and the evolving threat posed by increasingly capable nation-states...' grab you? Does open source and freely available security support terrorism by its very nature?"

Comments

Empowerment for All

[ErMaC]

The beauty of real, open source, free software is that it empowers EVERYONE. Be they good, bad, or ugly, everyone is given access to the same kind of benefits. On the one hand, of course this empowers terrorists. But then again so does encryption research. Should we ban encryption? I'm sure the MPAA would have things to say about that.
Open Source gives everyone an equal stake. Just because the enemy gets the same benefits doesn't mean we should stop. We're already "more powerful" than them - how will this uneven the playing field any more than it already is?

Re:Empowerment for All

[Ella the Cat]

Stomping on scientific research, technical innovation and in this case open source, all in the name of fighting terrorism is deeply unhealthy. Well duh, you might say, but my point is it's unhealthy not only for people being stomped on, but those doing the stomping, simply because the competition, whether military, political or economic, will be happily beavering away doing said research, innovating, using said open source, and so on. Why don't those in charge understand that it isn't in _their_ long term interests? I can hazard a guess, but I'd divert the thread. To prevent a couple of spurious objections, I'm not in favour of declassifying the usual military secrets, but I think things are being taken too far at the moment.

Re:Empowerment for All

[Anonymous Coward]

The telephone, planes, cars all empower terrorists. We should ban these technologies too. Come to think of it words empower terrorists. Ban 'em.

Re:Empowerment for All

[femto]

And empowerment of all will begin to attack the real roots of terrorism: Ignorance, poverty, extremisim, ...

Re:Empowerment for All

[anomaly]

With all due respect, I strongly disagree with your utopian view.

Increasing the education of the general populous and raising their standard of living will have little effect on stopping terrorism.

Some of the best educated people in the world have been the most terrible. Eugenics does not come from dunderheads. Chemical weapons are not created by morons.

Providing wealth is no panacea, either. John D. Rockefeller was asked once "How much is enough?" Reportedly his response was "Just a little bit more." It is the nature of man to compare himself with others, and sadly comparison is the root of discontentment.

Education and money are not problem solvers on their own.

With respect to your "extremism must be eliminated" type of approach: That view in itself is an extreme view.

The real roots of conflict within mankind are directly related to man's relationship with truth.

Absolute truth does exist, and when man's worldview and life choices contradict that, it leads to conflict within himself and with other people.

Even if a man is in sync with absolute truth in his worldview and life choices, he will be in conflict with those who reject the truth.

Conflict is inevitable in the world. The question is this: "Is your side of the conflict in sync with what is objectively true, or is it merely your opinion that you're fighting for?"

Respectfully,
Anomaly

For gods sake...

[supz]

By nature, terrorists obviously aren't going to obey any laws... much less SOFTWARE LICENSES. This makes Windows a FREE OS.

And with Microsoft's latest effort to try to make their OS's as "secure" as possible, shouldn't all these people picking on opensource be targeting Microsoft as well, since they are now SECURE?

All this post-9/11 paranoia is getting really ridiculous, and I can't wait till someone in power finally realizes how stupid we are being.

Re:For gods sake...

[skillet-thief]

I couldn't agree more, except for the fact that in america, the masses are in power.

The masses are being manipulated by the power. Our beloved U.S. government has been keeping the fear of terr'rism alive in order to manipulate the masses by cowing them into the position of "standing behind the commander in chief".

Days after the end of the Iraq War, the terr'rism alert level was dropped. As if... As if Saddam Hussein had anything to do with Al Quaida, as if the war hadn't sparked more anti-American resentment in the Arab world, resentment that could obviously lead to more terr'rism...

Total, cynical manipulation of the deep fears of the masses. And now other people, ie. advocates of proprietary software, are trying to see for how much they can milk fear of terr'rism for their own interests. Just like the oil companies use the issues to convince us that they need to drill in the Arctic Wilderness. Pretty soon we will hear that imposing mileage restrictions on SUVs would encourage terr'rism.

This is all sickening.

This is getting crazy..

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly this is starting to get out of hand. I really don't mean this in a 'bashing' way, but the United States really needs to take a step back and look at what the hell it is doing to itself.

This 'Homeland Security' and ferocious anti-terrorism behaviour is getting seriously out of hand.. its an enormous overreaction and its starting to make the USA look very very silly.

I totally appreciate that the threat of terrorism is real, and I believe that we must take measures to protect ourselves.. but offending and mistreating people of other countries & backgrounds is not the way to do it.

blaming a hammer

[drfrog]

yes a hammer can
build a terrorist building
it can build a church
or a hospital too

are we to stop selling hammers
to weed out terrorism?

FreeBSD + Linux = Evil Axis of Open Source?

[phrogeeb]

Incredulous!

This is comparable to our brand-spanking new Department of Homeland Security calling Wireless Networks a "terrorist technology".

Personally, I'd rather have open source software running on all important computers - that way we can check to make sure that things are done right, rather than have to trust in proprietary source code churned out by the monkeys at MS. I feel more threatened by the unknown than by the free.

I subscribe to a belief expressed best by Benjamin Franklin:
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security".

Put these in the right order

[cassidyc]

Horse

Cart

If nation-states are planing terrorist activities, it has already been shown that they do not need free operating systems or software to execute its plans.

A terrorist group will perform it's act regardless of OS.

CJC

Too many questions...

[shr3k]

"Does open source and freely available security support terrorism by its very nature?"

So, you mean to tell me that we can trust closed source companies whose primary motivation is the almighty dollar?

I know that most companies are not *that* evil, but how about the case where a company insider shares *important information* with a terrorist resource? Or the case of a sale of software and a license for "shared source" to a company that could be a front for a terrorist organization?

And will the government be willing to put in the necessary oversight to make sure that these companies don't spill the wrong beans? And, given how politics and lobbying go, can a company influence the government the wrong way (intentionally or unintentionally) to avoid this oversight?

I don't know if open source is inherently supportive of terrorism. I couldn't really tell you. But there are too many questions involved when you argue that closed source should be the only way when it comes to security.

This sounds like another effort to promote "security through obscurity" as the only way to go. I guess they could sue if someone breaks that method of security.

When is the Fear going to End

[Dr. Cfire]

Its time to stop cowering in the corner from the terrorist "boogey man". Every week there is a new hot button item that promotes terrorism. The general media and governement in the united states seams to want the people to be afraid of everything. Why is it that your governmet has the money to produce this very vague early wrning system but no money for health care. What exactly is a orange alert. Your leaders come on televison and say that you should be scared because somewhere, sometime, something bad is going to happen, stop living in fear and start living your lives. Get out there live your lives, enjoy them and go watch bolwing of columbine it will change they way you think.

Freedom enables terrorism

[edhall]

It's an uncomfortable truth that complete suppression of terrorism requires complete suppression of freedom. If we want to maintain our freedom, we'll have to combat the fear of terrorism every bit as strongly as we fight terrorism itself. We'll have to risk that our promotion of freedom will at some points allow terrorism to operate. In a word, we need courage. But if we depend entirely upon our government and military to be courageous for us, we're already far along the road to losing our liberty.

-Ed

Self fullfilling prophecies

[mseeger]

Hi,

if you want to catch terrorists, there are two ways:

• You hunt down an existing terrorist: This is a very tedious way. Those guys tend to be cunning, hide in holes and avoid cell phones.
• You pick someone you already have or can easily lay your hands on. Than you declare what he's doing to be a terrorist (or supporting) activity (e.g. encrypting, breaking copy protection, concealing ip addresses, writing open source software).

The second method may have one disadvantage: You may find a terrorist where none has been before looking. This is like a self fullfilling prophecy. By declaring people to be terrorists you can make them to be.

Serious: I'm more scared by the changes to the political systems than by the Al-Quaida. The "war on terror" has become a convenient handle (also in europe) to push for changes that have unacceptable before. The result may be the destruction of our ideals (a free society) in the name to defending them.

Yours, Martin

P.S. My definition of terrorist is "someone who is using violence against civilians with the goal to use the resulting scare/horror to force them into an action they wouldn't do by free will". This definition has become very unpopular after WWII because it included too many winners.