CIA Software Developer Goes Open Source, Instead

jamie found this piece, at Wired's Danger Room from a couple of days back, about an encouraging sign for the growth of open source in the military / intelligence sphere. "For three years, Matthew Burton has been trying to get a simple, useful software tool into the hands of analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency. For three years, haggling over the code’s intellectual property rights has kept the software from going anywhere near Langley. So now, Burton’s releasing it — free to the public, and under an open source license."

Comments

Re:An interesting counterpoint...

[ewanm89]

The answer as in an expert system software is not to entirely rely on it, but use it as a tool in your arsenal to help you do the job. Yes a computer can't figure every conceivable option in most circumstances, but neither can a human, the key is they my both come up with solutions unique to one another.

Do we want that?

[imsabbel]

Do we really want growing open source use in the military / intelligence sphere?
Where is the border between helpful and harmful, and where is the moral event horizon for the contributors?

"Software for Analysts" sounds harmless, but could very well be their best shot at re-creating 1984. Is it really encouraging to have Echelon being empored by open source to eavesdrop on even more emails and phone calls?

Or how about drones, avionics, etc? Would you feel empowered by having a killbot using your code?

Re:Do we want that?

[WWWWolf]

Do we really want growing open source use in the military / intelligence sphere?

The article mentions several good points, biggest of which is that it stops people from reinventing the wheel all the time.

Where is the border between helpful and harmful, and where is the moral event horizon for the contributors?

All of the definitions of the open source and free software currently say "no discrimination of fields of endeavour" or something similar. Software shouldn't be "private use only" or "private or non-profit use only" or "only for use in field X".

What would you say if you found an awesome graphics application, but its license said "only for professional design industry use"? A license like that would annoy art students (who aren't in the industry yet), independent artists (who don't give a damn about the "industry"), or plain old normal people who happen to have a need to patch up some graphics some times (and who think "industry" = "they'll charge a lot of money from us if I want anything done").

From the description, it sounds like this software package would be very useful for researchers, analysts, and maybe even lawyers. Is arbitrarily limiting this software to "only for military intelligence use" really fruitful?

"Software for Analysts" sounds harmless, but could very well be their best shot at re-creating 1984.

There are more than one software packages in existence. They have widely varied forms of operation. Software vendors are capable of producing very different products that have nothing to do with each other.

Let's try this conspiracy theory in private sector: "Microsoft released Windows, which was their opening salvo for an unspeakable horror unleashed upon mankind in form of Bob." Yeah, that conspiracy worked really well and now Windows is suspicious. (Well, Windows is suspicious, but not for this reason.)

Is it really encouraging to have Echelon being empored by open source to eavesdrop on even more emails and phone calls? Or how about drones, avionics, etc? Would you feel empowered by having a killbot using your code?

Here's the thing: You could say the same thing about science. You can use science to explore the universe and improve the quality of life. But at the same time, you can use science to blow the shit out of your enemies. People discovered rockets - and now they can be used to both propel people to the moon, and to propel warheads across the world.

Like science, software solves problems. Sometimes these problems can be applied to problems that either morally sound or morally questionable.

Who says Echelon's code couldn't benefit morally acceptable uses? The details are scarce, but assuming the system exists, it must process tons of data really fast. Telephone call analysis part sounds very interesting - even the best publicly available speech analysis systems are very weak and there's certainly a legitimate, pressing need for actually working automatic speech transcription. Drones and avionics? Tons to pick apart, but even I could list a few things that come to mind - navigation systems (route finding, location awareness/reaction stuff) would be awesome. Smart weapons do a lot of image processing, too; identifying people and reacting to their movements sounds like a tough image processing challenge - and if the science behind it was more accessible to people, it could be used for all sorts of cool things.

You may say that this is backwards, but the direction doesn't really matter. If you build any publicly accessible piece of software, it can be copied and reverse-engineered by people who are up to no good, if it helps them to accomplish their goals. The military keeps an eye on the scientists and their new discoveries and wonder how this helps them to blow more people up. They get the

Re:Do we want that?

[KahabutDieDrake]

Are you really trying to put a moral equivalence on software? Insanity. Either you create and share the code with the world, or you don't. You don't get to share it with only the people you like. That's called Closed source licensing.

No Sale

[tomhath]

As I read the article, the guy extended to some software the CIA already had on speculation, but they don't want to buy his extension. So he has a hissy fit and decides to abandon the project and release the source. Nothing to see here...

what software?!

[Phizzle]

So far, and for a while now, all this has been but site that collects peoples emails. There is NO SOFTWARE, just a promise that it's "Coming Soon"... Pardon the skepticism, but this could just be a misguided stunt by a butthurt developer to try and leverage public interest or a more nefarious scam, or just attention whoring.

Re:Wired... empf

[PopeRatzo]

there is something fishy

When has Wired magazine been anything besides glossy fishwrap? Their website is your standard Conde Nast press release publishing machine. There is so much fishy going on at Wired magazine between the editorial, advertising sales and the PR industry that whenever I read something of theirs I come away feeling like I'm covered in grease. There used to be a couple of good bloggers over there, including the great Bruce Sterling, but even he has started mailing it in, probably because even submitting stories to Wired leaves him feeling like he's covered in grease, too.

The last straw came a long time before the filthy business between Adrian Lamo and the editorial staff's sucking up to power, in true Conde Nast style and selling out wikileaks.

As hard as they try to appear hip and edgy, they're really nothing but part of a huge corporate billboard machine. There are dozens of excellent sites on the web that cover technology and culture much better. There's no need for anyone to visit or read Wired.

Re:Are Expert Systems Still Around?

[martin-boundary]

Both AI and expert systems are widely used without people realizing what they are, though.

For example, everybody who has an email spam filter uses one. If it's based on rules like name of the sender, source IP etc, then it's an expert system in disguise. If it's based on bayesian tech, it's AI in disguise.

The labels AI and expert system are slightly toxic, due to the overpromising about them that was done in th epast, but the fundamental ideas are sound and useful.

Re:Do we want that? YES

[nanospook]

If I write military software and use a variety of open source projects in my software, what it does is allow me to build with tools that have been vetted by analyst as being clean. E.g. I need a crypto software for my submarine communications systems, I can re-use open source knowing that the code has been researched and found to be clean of "other influences". If I use a black blox software, you don't know what is inside (at least not as easily). An open source box can be analyzed and signed, joining a list of "approved" tools. I don't write military software, so I'm just opining generically here..