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FSF Responds To Microsoft's Privacy and Encryption Announcement
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft announced yesterday their plans to encrypt customer data to prevent government snooping. Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan questions the logic of trusting non-free software, regardless of promises or even intent. He says, 'Microsoft has made renewed security promises before. In the end, these promises are meaningless. Proprietary software like Windows is fundamentally insecure not because of Microsoft's privacy policies but because its code is hidden from the very users whose interests it is supposed to secure. A lock on your own house to which you do not have the master key is not a security system, it is a jail. ... If the NSA revelations have taught us anything, it is that journalists, governments, schools, advocacy organizations, companies, and individuals, must be using operating systems whose code can be reviewed and modified without Microsoft or any other third party's blessing. When we don't have that, back doors and privacy violations are inevitable.'"
Who cares if the software is non-free? That's not even the issue.
"Microsoft announced yesterday their plans to encrypt customer data to prevent government snooping. "
And I bet Microsoft will just hand over the encryption keys / passwords to the NSA.
Gutsy, they're basically pissing on the entire box-package software development industry, and no small number of hardware/firmware companies, when they say you can't trust closed-source.
It's right of course, but if truth and justice mattered enough to the people who make decisions about how large corporations and governments are run we wouldn't be in this mess now would we?
So, Microsoft finally does something no geek could object to and the FSF's response is "even if this looks like a good thing, this can't be a good thing because it's proprietary". It just makes me wonder why they bother making a statement; it's proprietary, it always is and it always has been.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Not just that, but what the FSF spokesman is saying here is essentially right (though I think they could do with a bit less imagery, it makes it seem like they're just pushing their agenda, not that I disagree with it). How are we supposed to verify that Microsoft is even keeping its promise if we don't have access to the source? They could just be paying it lip service and not really doing anything about it. Or, they could be incompetent (MS, incompetent? what a novel idea). Or they might just make a token attempt at getting things "kinda sorta" secure (or at least looking secure). Again, how can we trust that they're following through? If it was free software, there's the capacity for anyone to audit it and make sure it's secure (and if it's not, there are more ways to deal with it than "annoy MS until they fix it").
we are going to do everything we can within current technical and legal bounds to address this for them
My point is that they are not doing everything they can, they are instead they are pursuing a cosmetic measure that will make no real difference to what customers are concerned about. How about, for example, providing me with the ability to use my own keys that are never stored on a MS system?
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Though I agree, that a corporation can be forced by an authoritarian government to put a backdoor into their product, I don't believe, open-source software is immune against backdoors either.
There are scores of people with commit-access to Linux kernel, for example. If the NSA — or its counterpart from any other rich country in the world — put their mind to it, they could use any one (or more) of them to weaken the security functionality in there.
It does not need to be obvious — making the /dev/random's output slightly less random, for example, may reduce the time it takes to tap an ssh or ssl connection with this host from many years down to days. Same goes for PGP-keys generated on the affected host... Nor does it need to involve blatant coercion — the committer may simply receive a patch by e-mail with a fix to some other bug or an improvement, and fail to spot the weakening.
It could, in fact, have already been done years ago for all we know. Who knows, if this little problem was not deliberately introduced? And even if it was not — who knows, whether various security agencies exploited it from 2006 to 2013 the way Alan Turing et al exploited mistakes of the German radio-operators during WW2?
Is it easier to plant a backdoor into an open-source project than a closed-source one — and keep it there for a useful period of time? I'm not at all sure, what I'd bet on, to be perfectly honest. Both can done and, by all appearances, both have been done...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Let's face it: as far as we know, the door lock manufacturers also have a master key to all our houses. The schematics and design of the lock are not publicly available, and most people lack the skills to know if the schematics they are looking at are secure or not. It's the same with an OS. And while I *could* take the lock apart and figure out how it works, I still wouldn't know if my particular lock were secure or not, because I have not seen enough locks to know if this particular one is good or not.
Anytime this condition arises, we replace our own lack of knowledge with a trust in experts. We have to defer the judgement of security worthiness to an expert we trust, in which case we are again disinter-mediated from knowing if the lock is actually secure or not. We all trust *someone* with very specific knowledge to help us make decisions, whether that be medical, scientific, security or otherwise, and in each of those cases, we can find examples of where the expert has let us down.
It really is arrogant of FSF to imply that a user trusting one or a small group of individuals running an opensource project is somehow better off and more secure than microsoft.
Unless a user audits the code, compiles the code (with a known to be good compiler) and manages all elements of the server and routing, there is NO assurance of security or privacy. And never mind the fact that few users even compile from source anymore.
Offtopic: why am I being sent to the beta site to post comments? Very annoying as it does not remember my login credentials and noscript is reporting XSS issues.
As far as I can tell, the counter-arguments against FSF's position boil down to "well I trust {Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle} anyway, so there!" and "who cares if you can trust your computing infrastructure anyway, get over it!" If you have something more to add to those illuminating arguments, please do so.
In fairness I think the counter argument is a little more nuanced than you're representing it. It's more along the lines of: non-programmers are in no position to verify that things have been done correctly even if the program is open source. And even experienced programmers can't, as a practical matter, be expected to meticulously review the millions of lines of code that goes into the various programs they use, nor are they likely to build all of their own software from source all the time. So realistically, even if the software is open source you still have to trust some else to verify it. All open source does is change who the person is that your'e trusting from Microsoft to $YOUR_FAVOURITE_FREE_SOFTWARE_GROUP.
Now perhaps you trust the general open source community more than you trust Microsoft (or Google or Apple or whoever). That's perfectly fine. But I can certainly see how a reasonable person could look at that position and go "why should I trust random strangers on the internet if I'm not willing to trust Microsoft?". Now perhaps that's not good argument. But I think it's at least a little bit more substantive than the strawman you've presented.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
How would I find out, personally, that Linux Mint is sharing keys with the NSA? The likelihood that I would personally discover that secret is somewhere between slim to none. I can't read code well enough, nor am I likely to spend the time necessary to read every line of code in the programs.
My assurance stems from,
1. Thousands (at least) of other end users actually do peruse the code, looking for errors, back doors, exploits, etc.
2. My OS comes from a "trusted source" - one which I personally trust.
Yes, there is a weakness in there. That weakness is, I have to trust someone. At the same time, there is a strength hidden right beside the weakness. I get to CHOOSE who I trust.
What, exactly, has convinced you that you can actually trust Microsoft? Has MS invited you to personally examine their code, to satisfy yourself that there are no exploits in their system? No? I didn't think so.
Linux, on the other hand, invites me to read any or all of their source.
You choose what you want, I'll choose what I want, thank you very much.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If this NSA kerfluffle has amounted to anything, it is a validation of the idea that "Security through obscurity" is as invalid as we've all been told - since the 1980's.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.