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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.'"
How is encrypting data in motion going to help when they will simply provide the NSA the keys or otherwise provide access to the data. They are just another participant in the 'we never provided direct access' lie, when you simply provide everything on demand they don't need direct access, nor do they need to decrypt data off the wire.
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Who cares if the software is non-free? That's not even the issue.
You are correct, the issue is that it must be open source and build-able from source.
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
Welcome to the good fight -- the FSF has been at it for a long time, and now the EFF realizes that you can't have freedom without knowledge. That is after all why we believe in a free press in the west, right? Whether the press lives up to its obligations or not, the idea is that without full disclosure, people cannot make good decisions.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
And I bet Microsoft will just hand over the encryption keys / passwords to the NSA.
Things like these are still a step forward, as NSA has to actually ask for the keys from companies, instead of just passively snooping everywhere it wants to.
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.
Right. Because No Such Agency would never be able to find a way to read data encrypted by an open source program. Why, that's a magical band-aid for everything!
It makes things more difficult for them. Instead of having a neat backdoor they either have to insert obfuscated code, which could be detected or replaced at any time or convince people to use weak algorithms. Being open source people can select any algorithm they want - AES, Twofish, Serpent, Elyptic Curve, or rot13. The chances are that not all of them will be compromised. (if they all are then open or closed source doesn't matter - you're screwed either way)
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
You seem to be confusing good security design and security through obscurity. A good encryption algorithm is still a good encryption algorithm when it's generally known how it works as it would rely on a separate "secret" or "key". Like a house door - I can know how it works, but without the key it's not going to be easy to open.
Bad security uses "security through obscurity". Those types of systems become useless once you know how they work. Examples of this would include puzzle locks, ROT13 encryption etc.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Security isn't a binary function. Open source is more secure than closed source because many independent people can download the source and review it, many people can build binaries, etc..
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.