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Can Open Source Give Comfort To the Enemy?
zlite writes "We make open source Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones), mostly for geomapping and other amateur uses. One of our problems is that most people think of UAVs as Scary Things, and despite our efforts to prove otherwise there's always the risk of regulatory crackdowns. We have amateur UAV participants from around the world, but now they've been joined by an Iranian in Tehran, who has made a UAV in the colors of the Iranian flag. My instinct is that we should welcome everyone, everywhere, but I'm sure some in Washington worry that this looks like helping an 'Axis of Evil' country make advanced weapons. They could shut us down with the stroke of a pen. My question: is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?"
OH GOD THE IRANIAN FLAG!
As if Americans don't festoon their flag everywere.
Patiotic? "Nationalistic"? God.
If you want to do the government's work for them, sure.
If you are shutting down a project based solely on the fear that your government may shut you down in the future (and not for a valid reason), you are only saving them the trouble, and making it that much worse for the next controversial open-source project that comes along.
Just like scientific advancements and knowledge in general are available to anyone, anywhere, so should be open source software. It's a principles thing.
In any case, something tells me no open source UAV software will ever be capable of running a weapons platform without significant contributions. If a country can build a UAV capable of military grade recon or even able to field weapons, they won't have any problem writing the software.
Enemy of whom? Iran has not been in a war of aggression against any nation, since the 19th century.
Don't bite the propaganda of AIPAC or Dick Cheney! Israel is the nuclear armed agressor in the Middle East.
Persian culture, by way of contrast, produced the world's first assertion and declaration of Human Rights, and is responsible for the foundation of modern mathematics.
You want ethical and humane living? Read the Avesta of Zoroaster. Unlike the rabid Old Testament, it pleads that humanity have good thought, good speech and good deeds, not casting it's neighbors as "abominations" and wishing them plagues.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
One would think someone infiltrating a group to aid a hostile government would be able to cover their tracks a little better. Maybe use a cutout in Germany, South America or Canada. It would be pretty foolish for the Iranian Air Force to use an IP that traces back to Tehran. Just because they talk with an accent doesn't mean they think with one.
Besides, if the Iranians want advanced UAV's, the Russians will sell them whatever is in their inventory. The Chinese, who probably make a lot of the circuit boards and sub systems for our military, would happily sell them their 100% original design...that just happens to look amazingly like ours. Heeeey.
If they struck out there then they're down to the French, Taiwanese, North Koreans and a half-dozen other countries happy to sell them weapons systems under the table.
Of course, this is the Bush administration we're talking about here. Logic and common sense hold no sway in American government and people get appointed to high office because they're skilled fund raisers. So, yeah, I could see them shaking down you guys just because it makes them feel like they're doing something and they can understand you when you talk...if you limit yourself to simple words. Plus you're convenient driving distance from their offices.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I hate to complicate matters, but...I'm not sure it's so cut-and-dried. The Nazi example above may seem a little silly to some, but it's not totally off-the-wall. It seems to me that the question that needs to be asked is "Who says it's a national security issue?" If it seems like a knee-jerk "He's a Muslim!"-type thing, then we're not really talking national security. But if we're dealing with someone who has a reasonable likelihood of wanting to harm the U.S., and the project itself actually lends itself to that, then...yeah, I suppose you'd need to seriously consider not allowing the guy to participate.
In other words: believe it or not, there are somethings that are more important than "freedom"...as far as SOFTWARE goes. =P
Yes, making a UAV is not trivial, but neither is it incredibly difficult. There are plenty of cheap parts out there that, with a little programming, could tie together a small GPS module and aircraft control servos. It wouldn't be too terribly difficult for any country to make a UAV; I would say with a parts budget of $1K US, I could probably get a simple one (that could fly to a given waypoint) working within a few weeks/months. With $10K, you could make a very capable one -- probably with a range of several hundred km -- which could carry a small payload (a few grams of radioactives go a long way, ya know.)
Bottom line -- trying to restrict such technology is laughable these days. Microchip literally gives away microcontrollers capable of handling a small aircraft, given the right software and interface electronics. These "evil terr-a-rists" will always be able to get their hands on technology. What we need is to find a way to make it politically difficult for them to continue as terrorists. (I.E. find a diplomatic solution.)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
``My instinct is that we should welcome everyone, everywhere, but I'm sure some in Washington worry that this looks like helping an 'Axis of Evil' country make advanced weapons.''
Is anyone still taking these guys seriously? I mean, the "Axis of Evil" was coined at the time when the whole cast was performing a play where they convinced the USAmerican public that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a great threat to the USA. Now that has been exposed for the load of bollocks many of us already saw it for at the time. The whole "Axis of Evil" concept was invented to scare the American public into thinking there was a conspiracy against them, but, in all the time since then, none of the countries on this supposed axis have actually attacked the USA. The only aggressor in this whole stage play has been the USA itself, with the demagogues leading the violence somehow escaping scrutiny. Sure, Iraqis are killing US soldiers _now_, but, well, can you blame them, after said soldiers plunged their country into an anarchy where it's news if there is a day _without_ bombings? And the same guys who came up with the "Axis of Evil" told you that the US soldiers would be received as heroes and bring peace and stability to Iraq.
And now you are saying that X is a good idea, but we'd better not do it because the "Axis of Evil" guys may not like it? I'm not saying the idea is good and you should do it, but _not_ doing it because of those demagogues seems about as bad an idea as they get. They've done enough damage already!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
TROLL ALERT
It is unbelievable propaganda to equate Iran to Nazi Germany. Israeli disinfo and psyops (MEMRI) deliberately mis-translate stories, and the lapdog media in the US and UK eat it up.
Here is the country, and the people, that you smear as "enemy".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Technology is not inherently wrong/evil/whatever. Technology is just technology. And if an Iranian kid finds some peaceful apps for technology, good for him, hope he inspires the hell out of his friends to do the same.
Let's face it, you can use a baseball bat to play baseball. Or, you can use it to beat somebody to a pulp. Going to make baseball illegal cause somebody might pick up a bat and hit somebody? Same principle.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
My question: is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?"
Crypto was kept out of the Linux kernel for a long time, since the US had regulation on exporting crypto systems. These were mostly lifted under Clinton, though there's still a list of countries that it's illegal to export to (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria, according to: http://www.epic.org/crypto/export_controls/regs_1_ 00.html).
RMS has stated that if copyright laws in the vein of the DMCA continue to be passed, Free Software development could no longer take place in US borders.
Germany was recently hit with a law that outlawed "hacking software", apparently including nmap or packet sniffers.
It's nice to say that you want to do things for the good of humanity, but beaurocrats have other ideas.
Not a typewriter
The Iranian Government currently has the technology to produce:
And you think that stopping a not for profit, model aircraft UAV building group is going to limit their ability to produce a military UAV.
So how many other open source projects may have secret Iranian participants, shall we shut them all down.
How about shutting down Linux because it can be used by the Iranians to build super computers like they do in the west to test bomb designs.?
Lets ban all knowledge because the terrorists may get at it.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I'm not sure what those pictures are supposed to prove--Nazi Germany had cars and trees and apartment buildings and highways too. It is not quite accurate to compare the two, however. Iran is more like pre-Reformation Europe--a civilization whose people are growing more advanced, leading to tensions with a medieval theocratic regime.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
While I do personally agree with your sentiments, that is not really the question being asked. The question being asked is "Is it legal?".
That question is more complex. I am working on a rocket - similar issue arise. ITAR is the governing regulation, and the state department decides what ITAR means. And they are not logical about it.
I want to develop human rocket transports - but anything that goes into space is automatically a weapon, according to the state department. That means that if I talk to a non-US citizen about my improvements to rockets, I go to jail - let alone hiring or working with a non-US citizen.
UAVs seem very likely to fall under ITAR, because the state department will almost certainly say so. Ignorance of the law does not free you from the consequences of it, so I would tread carefully. One of the biggest problems with ITAR is that it is difficult to know exactly what it makes illegal - and so you end up having to consult lawyers every time you want to do anything involving foriengers. Very annoying, and very expensive! But it does lock in big profits for government contractors, of course... (You did know that they get reimbursed for all legal expenses, right?)
My dream is that knowing this will so enrage the Slashdot community that everyone will call their senator and tell them to force the state department to make the ITAR list less inclusive, and only include things that have weaponry as a primary purpose - and get congress to force state to change.
I'd also like a pony...
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Don't bite the propaganda of AIPAC or Dick Cheney! Israel is the nuclear armed agressor in the Middle East.
Huh? Aggressor? Last I checked, it wasn't Israel who was swearing to wipe out other countries, nor do they send suicide bombers to blow up buses of children. Israel is certainly not squeaky clean, but having enemies around you screaming for your destruction tends to make a country trigger happy. The ledger of atrocities is about 10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel.
Persian culture, by way of contrast, produced the world's first assertion and declaration of Human Rights, and is responsible for the foundation of modern mathematics.
Those civilizations are long dead -- unfortunately for the people of the middle east.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Persian culture, by way of contrast, produced the world's first assertion and declaration of Human Rights, and is responsible for the foundation of modern mathematics.
While I somewhat agree with that sentiment, we need to recognize that Iran isn't exactly the same Persia that we know and love. A lot has changed over the years. Persia finally succumbed to Islam; around 90% of Iranians follow the various Islamic faiths, and there are very few Zoroastrians hanging around. Sure, ethnically, the people are mostly the same as they were during the Empire years, but to say that culture is still pervasive? I don't know about that. Also, you can't berate people who follow the other Abrahamic religions, and then praise a modern country filled with people who also follow an (in my eye) equally stupid, but somewhat different Abrahamic religion. What sense does that make?
I've no doubt that the Iranian people are generally, and individually, great people; still, they're under the influence of assholes. It's no different than the US. Their government lies, our government lies, their leader has a screw loose, our leader has to have a screw loose-and unfortunately he has control over the bombs. Israel is the same way. It would be nice, however, if Ahmadinejad didn't periodically call for the elimination of Israel. Instead of defusing the situation, all they do is throw another stick of dynamite on the pile, and it doesn't further their cause in the international arena.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Believe it or not, there was a time in American history when lots of people carried guns. Used them to catch dinner, too. Shooting a person was considered bad form.
You're confused. Israel has never fought an aggressive war.
Right - like the war in 1948 where Arabs were massacred or ethnic-cleansed out of their villages... that wasn't aggressive. And nor was the unilateral "preemptive" strike on the Iraqi nuclear facility. Oh, and lets not forget the unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty (how many Americans were killed in the "accidental" attack that lasted several hours?). Oh, and the invasions into Lebanon... how many times now? Nope, no aggression there.
I'm fairly sure it still is considered bad form ;)
Normal people worry me!
You can name just as many atrocities that Muslim Arabs have committed against Israel. Over the years the suicide bombings, the kidnappings, and the rockets add up, you know. This debate is tired and it doesn't go anywhere. Both sides are convinced they are waging a defensive war, and anything can be justified if one thinks one is defending oneself.
You never hear anyone who speaks loudly condemn both sides for their ethical failures over the years. Why does everyone have to declare one side or the other innocent of all crimes?
Why don't we just look at the facts: Israel exists in a sea of Arab countries, some of whom consistently announce their intention to wipe them from the face of the Earth. This tense climate has made both sides afraid, and people who are afraid make bad decisions. Because of these bad decisions, the Muslims in Palestine have become more marginalized and more radicalized. The Israelis have become more aggressive.
This does not exempt either side from culpability, and it also does not make either side the clear moral victor.
The only way peace will be accomplished in the Middle East is if both sides learn to move past their grievances and realize that the past has no rational relationship to how they should proceed in the future. The past is all sunken cost. Both sides need to say to themselves: How do we prevent further death?
If you take a russian rocket engine into the US, it then becomes illegal to send it back to Russia or to tell anything technical about it to Russians. The only exception is anything "published", which you can quote (but not embellish - even saying "this looks good" could be construed as an ITAR violation).
I've heard that the best way around it is to patent it. A Patent counts as publishing it, which means that you can then talk about it. If you had published it yourself, they would consider that an ITAR violation - but if the PTO publishes it, you are off the hook.
The most annoying and inane rules anywhere. Seriously, call your senator!
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Come on! This is the same State Department and ITAR that banned exportation of strong encryption as being "dangerous to National Security". As a result, the US could not compete in the international marketing of effective encryption, while everybody else could.
They really thought that "security through obscurity" was a viable option.
What a crock.
Eventually they were FORCED to see the light... but the problem is, everybody else saw the light right away... not after many years of argument and litigation.
Rather than getting rid of UAVs, we should lobby to get rid of ITAR. Just about everybody would be happier as a result.
False comparison. The Native Americans suffered the worst of their indignities centuries ago. Palestinians who are in their 70's and 80's still have their house keys from their homes that they were forcibly removed from.
The Native Americans are allowed to become full American citizens. Palestinians are denied citizenship by Israel. Native Americans are offered economic autonomy, ie casinos and tax-free shopping, while Palestinians are suffering while Israel closes the borders and blocks commerce and electricity.
You never hear anyone who speaks loudly condemn both sides for their ethical failures over the years.
Wrong. Lots of people do. But those who do are despised by BOTH the sides (instead of just one of the sides) so they get much less media coverage. SO it ends up that anybody that talks against Israel's landgrabbing is labelled antisemitic (which is ridiculous if not else because the Palestinians are as much semitic as the Israeli, and actually often more semitic because most of Israeli are Jew but with lots of caucasic blood in their veins, so even from a purely racist point of view the label doesn't even make sense), and anybody that talks against the Palestinians terrorism acts is labeled as 'sold-out to the Israelf-US capitalistic landgrabbing agenda' or whatever.
Also, the main problem is that people keep talking about culpability instead of thinkin in terms of find a solution. This is exactly the same reason why most vendettas go on for centuries. (Plus, if we have to talk about culpability in the Palestine case I would go for the UN, which almost literely threw the Jew colonists to the lions, by supporting the creation of the State of Israel despite the clear and loud voices against it from the neighbouring nations. And please nobody mention the Belford declaration, that was before WWII and the promise to wipe Israel out of the face of Earth if it got founded was declared right after WWII, and before the foundation of the State. As for the right of a nation to have a State, that goes for lots of persecuted nations around the world, but nobody gives a shit about them so that's quite obviously not enough of a reason.)
So the solution has to rely on a current analysis of the situation, and the current analysis is that Israel is still landgrabbing, using the settlers (or squatters, depending on the point of view) outside of its borders as an excuse to extend its control over Palestine. Until they dismantle those settlements (that serve no purpose but landgrabbing) and fully retreat within the UN-declared borders they simply have no right to complain about the Palestinian terrorism. Likewise, Palestine should officially and once for all acknolwedge the State of Israel (within the UN-declared borders) and cease all hostile activity against Israel.
Of course, it's not something that I foresee happening anytime soon.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Instead of asking a bunch of Slashdotters what they think the government might say, why not ask the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency themselves. ICE and the Department of State have joint jurisdiction over ITAR. I've never been able to figure out who handles what, but I'd recommend starting with ICE. You can call them at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE. (Yes, this may be the first time in Slashdot history that someone has recommended calling DHS not as a joke.)
4 .htm
ICE has a program called Project Shield America that is designed for exactly this type of thing. Their goal is to try to educate industry about what can and can't be exported.
http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/shield07120
Lastly, IANAIA (I am not an ICE agent) but I suspect their answer is probably going to be that exporting UAV technology to Iran is a no-no. I'm sure it depends on exactly what you are doing, but from a quick googling, it looks like a lot of UAV related technology is restricted.
Why is it that I feel like I'm about to get modded back into the Stone Age?
The ledger of atrocities is about 10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel.
It's this type of thinking that truly galls me (as well as helps what's going on in the Middle East to continue). There's no "scorecard" to look at, and there's no such thing as, well, these atrocities are not as bad as those ones, therefore we should side with these guys. In case you haven't noticed, both sides are equally guilty of atrocities; both are just as bad as the other based on the measurement that they are atrocities. For every atrocity someone picks out about one side, there's certainly something equal to find from the other.
So, let's look at your claim: "10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel". Let's assume, like you do, that there is some sort of scorecard you can use to support this. How do you measure this?
Number of civilians killed? Israel has certainly killed more.
Number of times innocent civilians are targeted intentionally? Israeli Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur admitted in 1978 that Israel intentionally targeted civilian populations. Israeli military analyst Deev Schiff remarked on the comments at the time saying: "In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it ... [T]he importance of Gur's remarks is the admission that the Israeli army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously ... the army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets...[but] purposely attacked civilian targets even when Israeli settlements had not been struck." The same pattern was again repeated in the most recent Lebanon invasion, echoing the comments of Abba Eban's "rational prospect ... that afflicted populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities", terrorism in ever sense of the word.
Number of civilian targets and infrastructure destroyed? Just counting the recent war with Lebanon would put Israel in a clear lead.
What about terrorism, or genocide, or ethnic cleansing, or other human rights measurements such as torture etc.? Is that a measure of how bad an atrocity is? Do some reading about what Israel actually did to the civilian population during the first Lebanon war. For example, most men between 16 and 60 in Southern Lebanon were rounded up and imprisoned without any reason. Countless numbers were tortured, beaten, starved, and killed, quite intentionally, with the laughter and racist insults of their captors ringing in their ears. Or perhaps go further back and look at what Ilan Pappe (Israeli historian) calls "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", detailing quite accurately how the plan to forcibly transfer the Arab population from their land "was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity."
And what about being an aggressor? You imply they've always been on the defence, which is untrue. The 1956 Israeli-French-British attack on Egypt was not defensive. The 1978 invasion of Lebanon was not defensive. The 1973 Arab attack was an Israeli defensive war in that they were defending territory that they occupied. Even the 1967 war is not conclusively one of Israeli defence: Menachem Begin remarked that "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."
The point I'm trying to make here is that blame is not a zero sum game. Until there is some sort of even handedness against both parties - in other words, until there is an embargo against Israel on a par with what has been put in place against the Palestinians - there is simply not going to be peace in that region until one side is exterminated, and at the moment that is likely to be the Palestinians.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
That is a load of bullshit. I'm not a Muslim (well technically I am, but only by the definition used in the Quran, not by the definition used in this conversation), but I have read the Quran and the quotes you provide are taken woefully out of context. The Quran is a philosophical and enlightening book and if you pay careful attention to the context, not violent either.
The fanatical lunatics who terrorise civilians and who drag the Prophet's Name, Peace be upon Him (although he probably ends up rolling in his grave every time they defile His name with their acts), through mud at every chance they get are no more faithful Muslims than the Spanish Inquisition were loving Christians.
Feel free not to take my word for it, but rather than visiting some anti-<insert religion here> site, go to the source and read their holy scriptures with an open mind. Also do not forget to bear in mind the time and place they were revealed, that help explain some of the more interesting laws.
As far as translations of the Quran go, I've been given to understand that George Sale's translation is very good.
Anybody who 'excels' at any sport is by definition a genetic abberation. The people who are 'best' at all the Olympic events start out as being physically ideal in some way and then train further in the given activity. So since they're already genetic freaks, what's the difference if they're chemically augmented genetic freaks?
Big brutish football players, and freakish tall basketball players would deserve our sympathy if there wasn't an entertainment industry eager to draw our attention to them (and to the advertising played in parallel with their performances)
There. The nerd interpretation of sports.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
Palestinians are also denied citizenship by all Arab states, due to an Arab League decision of NOT allowing Palestinians to be absorbed by any Arab country (thus keeping the pressure against Israel).
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Here's the thing: if you're a pilot, UAVs are scary things.
We're already trained to look for birds, which are bad enough bad at least have the courtesy to move in a way that attracts the eye naturally. But UAVs are very hard to see and do not talk on the radio to let other aircraft know where they are ("I see you about 2 miles off my wing"). They can't even look around to see what other VFR aircraft (who are not required to carry anything more complex than eyeballs to avoid collisions) they might be nearing and steer clear.
Outside of controlled airspaces, these things are deathtraps waiting to happen unless very clear rules govern their deployment, just as there are rules for other moving hazards like sykdivers ("sykdivers in the air from x-thousand feet in the area imediately south of mumblefrotz airfield, traffic steer clear"). Too many, and they're be the only things in the sky. Too few, and there won't be enough general awareness of their use in VFR airspaces.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny