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Congress Passes Bill Forcing Tech Companies To Disclose Foreign Software Probes (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Congress is sending President Donald Trump legislation that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military. Companies would be required to address any security risks posed by the foreign source code reviews to the satisfaction of the Pentagon, or lose the contract. The legislation also creates a database, searchable by other government agencies, of which software was examined by foreign states that the Pentagon considers a cyber security risk. It makes the database available to public records requests, an unusual step for a system likely to include proprietary company secrets. The final version of the bill was approved by the Senate in a 87-10 vote on Wednesday after passing the House last week. The spending bill is expected to be signed into law by Trump.
So how might this affect the companies like RedHat, Debian and the other Linux distros that are open source based? Even Mozilla and Android are largely publicly available. It is clear that their source is available for all to peruse. Is this going to add a bunch of paperwork overhead to these companies so they can continue developing and providing software to the US government?
--I like turtles...
So what if there is a law that prohibits government source probes from being disclosed?
bickerdyke
I am a lot less concerned about the PRC being allowed to view the code for Oracle DB or Windows than I am about allowing Chinese citizens to be employed to work on them. The human intelligence network run by PRC intelligence puts anything the US or Russians have ever had to shame because they can rely on Chinese nationalism in the civilian population to get part-time assets in places we never could. It should be taken as a given that the PRC has agents in Microsoft and Oracle because that's how they roll.
If any of that sounds outlandish, read this. As just one example, in terms of influencing public policy, the PRC is way worse than anything most liberals believe about Russia.
ditto dotta title see?
to title the submission "Congress Passes Bill Forcing Tech Companies to Disclose Foreign Probes".
us empire has already failed just like ottoman
Russia -> Trump; only probe which needs disclosing at the moment.
Maybe the US should get good at finding the vulnerabilities that Russia and China might be looking for.
If we can't assess the quality of the software/hardware that is purchased with taxpayer money, we should learn how to do so or not be in the business of buying it.
Relying on security through obscurity to make up for our lack of ability to assess quality will only lead to a false sense of security.
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
"In order to sell in the Russian market, technology companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, SAP SE and McAfee have allowed a Russian defense agency to scour software source code for vulnerabilities, the Reuters investigation found last year."
Senator Jeanne Shaheen is dumb as a post. Foreign governments are purchasing American technology. It would be in their best interests to see if there are backdoors put in there by the NSA or CIA. This has happened before. Senator Biden talked about how the US put backdoors into pipeline controls sold to the Soivet Union. So this type of thing happens.
Thug boots incoming.
⦠when they outlaw FISA courts and gag orders on national security letters and pass laws that outlaw even discussion of bringing anything like them back.
My company will not comply. It's our private network and we won't be reporting on anything about it unless we want to.
Nothing irrational about acknowledging on-going spying from a foreign power. Maybe I'm missing some history between you and Mike.
Don't post links to bullshit websites like that. Ever. I WILL NOT BE A PART OF MALWARE ADS
Says it right there doesn't it.
you know, like a certain restriction on exportation of secure encryption. This will definitely get some American companies to think about selling on foreign soil as they will have to weigh the balance between selling on foreign soil and selling to the us government. In the end i expect most of them to pick the biggest return and for a few of them (Microsoft) to not care. It would be amusing to see the interaction between the government and Microsoft.
In the end i think things like this have no teeth because companies like Microsoft will always be sourced for government contracts, (like the gov will ever switch to linux) and others just wont care enough about the US government contracts if they are making more money off of foreign contracts.
You are comparing one dictatorship (Russia) to another (China), and in your "opinion" China is worse. Then to compound your head-slapper, you suggest that liberals (I'm guessing you aren't one, and you also aren't likely very qualified to make good assessments of them) like China and don't like Russia.
Way to go, Einstein. I learned nothing except how stupid and parochial you are.
Should be: anything revealed to anyone outside the company must be revealed to the public.