March 2011 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [Freedombox-discuss] distributed DNS
by Eugen Leitl 16 Mar '11

16 Mar '11

----- Forwarded message from Boaz <alt.boaz(a)gmail.com> -----

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Информационная безопасность: Актуальность вопроса защиты информации
by Вирусная угроза компьютерной информации 16 Mar '11

16 Mar '11

------------------------------------------------------------------------- ИНФОРМАЦИОННАЯ БЕЗОПАСНОСТЬ: Защита конфиденциальной информации и персональных данных, инновационный подход, современные технологии и практические решения ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22-23 Марта > 8 Моск. код: 7.42_9I_98 ; 792_2I22 >Цель обучения: Формирование у слушателей: системно-целостного видения проблем обеспечения информационной безопасности компании; умений организации и обеспечения эффективного функционирования систем информационной безопасности в компании; понимания природы возникновения угроз информационной безопасности и практической реализации мероприятий защиты от них. >Задачи: анализ основных проблем информационной безопасности и подготовка алгоритмов решений, исходя из существующих угроз; изучение опыта создания различных систем информационной безопасности в коммерческих структурах; обобщение современных подходов к формированию системы информационной безопасности компании; изучение современных приемов управления системами информационной безопасности компании. > ПPОГРАММА 1. Актуальность вопроса защиты информации * Актуальность проблемы защиты информации. Защита информации как составная часть общей системы безопасности организации (предприятия) * Основные понятия, термины и определения в области защиты информации * Основные направления защиты информации * Законодательная и нормативная база правового регулирования вопросов защиты информации * Требования к организации защиты конфиденциальной информации на предприятии (организации) * Составные части (основа) системы защиты информации 2. Коммерческая тайна * Понятие "коммерческой тайны" в предпринимательской деятельности. Законодательство РФ в области защиты коммерческой тайны * Методика составления Перечня сведений, содержащих коммерческую тайну * Внутренние нормативные документы, регламентирующие деятельность компании в области защиты коммерческой тайны 3. Угрозы информации. Возможные каналы утечки информации * Виды угроз информационной безопасности * Определение предмета и объекта защиты. * Технические каналы утечки информации. Их классификация. Механизмы образования * Организационные, организационно-технические меры и технические средства защиты информации от утечки по техническим каналам * Угрозы несанкционированного доступа (НСД) к информации Источники угроз. Классификация угроз * Возможная тактика использование программных и аппаратных закладных устройств (ЗУ). Уязвимость современных технических средств обработки информации (проводные и беспроводные системы, Интернет, мобильные средства связи и пр) 4. Мероприятия по защите информации. Противодействие промышленному шпионажу. Технические средства защиты информации * Формирование организационной структуры системы защиты информации на предприятии Принципы формирования, факторы и критерии принятия решения * Технические средства промышленного шпионажа * Защита информации от утечки по техническим каналам * Меры и средства защиты информации от технических средств ее съема * Приборы обнаружения технических средств промышленного шпионажа * Общие требования по защите помещений и технических средств * Организационные мероприятия по защите информации. Допуск, доступ, учет, хранение * Организационно- технические мероприятия защиты информации * Человеческий фактор в утечке информации. Превентивные мероприятия по предупреждению возможной утечки защищаемой информации. 5. Методы и средства защиты компьютерных систем * Возможные способы утери, искажения, изменения компьютерной информации или получения к ней несанкционированного доступа. * Вирусная угроза компьютерной информации. Антивирусная защита. * Возможность защиты информации при работе в сети Internet. Межсетевое экранирование. * Активный аудит. * Основы криптографической защиты информации. Классификация методов криптографического закрытия информации. Шифрование (симметричные криптосистемы и криптосистемы с открытым ключом). Кодирование и сжатие информации. Стеганография. * VPN (виртуальная частная сеть). Преимущества организации виртуальных частных сетей на основе Internet. * Электронная цифровая подпись. Электронная цифровая подпись как базовый механизм обеспечения юридической силы документа при электронном документообороте. * Практические примеры применения криптографических методов защиты информации. 6. Аудит информационной безопасности компании. Политика информационной безопасности * Анализ внутренних и внешних угроз информационной безопасности компании. Общие подходы * Методика разработки политики информационной безопасности в компании * Международные и российские стандарты безопасности информационных систем (ISO 17799, ГОСТ Р ИСО/МЭК 17799-2005) * Американская концепция системного подхода к обеспечению защиты конфиденциальной информации (OPSEC Operation Security) 7. Организация работы Службы информационной безопасности (СИБ) предприятия. Практический опыт * Процедура создания СИБ на предприятии. Разделение функций между СИБ и IT-подразделением. Место СИБ в структуре предприятия * Организация взаимодействия с Руководством и руководителями структурных IT-подразделений компании 8. Актуальные вопросы организации работы с персональными данными. Применение Федерального закона РФ ╧ 152 "О персональных данных" * Общие вопросы обработки и обеспечения защиты персональных данных (ПДн) в компании. * Международное и российское законодательство в области обработки ПДн. * Общие вопросы проведения работ по комплексной защите ПДн. * Порядок проведения работ по защите ПДн. * Общие вопросы согласования документов с регуляторами. * Обзор основных мероприятий, нормативно-правовой, организационно-распорядительной и нормативно-технической документации при создании системы защиты ПДн. Стоимость участия 19706 рублей За более подробной информацuей обpащайтеcь по тел: код: (четыре девять пять) Ч45З9-68 <> 792_21/22

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uinmyn 0.06
by StealthMonger 15 Mar '11

15 Mar '11

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Internet is even more powerful at protecting privacy than it is at destroying it. --- StealthMonger ... for low-latency systems like Tor, end-to-end traffic correlation attacks [8, 21, 31] allow an attacker who can observe both ends of a communication to correlate packet timing and volume, quickly linking the initiator to her destination. --- http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/doc/design-paper/challenges.pdf Long, random latency is part of the price of Internet anonymity. --- StealthMonger _ ____ ____ __ _ _|_|_ __ _ __ __ __ __ _ __ / _ \/ _ \ / / | | | | | '_ \| '_ \'_ \\ \/ /| '_ \ | | | | | | | ^\ | |_| | | | | | | | | | |\ / | | | | | |_| | |_| | () | \__,|_|_|_| |_|_| |_| |_|/ / |_| |_| \____(_)___/\___/ /_/ __________________________________________ | | | | | IS THIS ANONYMOUS BROWSING, OR WHAT?! | | | |__________________________________________| The url(a)is-not-my.name Internet page fetcher [1] allows the reading of Internet content with strong anonymity. An encrypted request is sent through a chain of anonymizing remailers and content is returned encrypted in Usenet newsgroup alt.anonymous.messages. No one, not even the is-not-my.name administrator, is able to link content being fetched with any particular user, or with other requests. Here are some scripts to facilitate use of url(a)is-not-my.name. There are two main scripts: uinmyn-fetch-body.py -- code URLs into a request and save the key uinmyn-do-aam-article.py -- extract pages from returned a.a.m. articles Given a (short) list of URLs, uinmyn-fetch-body.py generates a random key for the encryption and hsub of the reply, saves the key in a local database, and constructs the body of the request, encrypted and ready to send through a remailer chain. Each message from a.a.m. is then fed to uinmyn-do-aam-article.py. If the message matches a key in the database, the key is removed from the database, the decrypted message is saved for further processing, and the script returns with a positive code. Otherwise, the script gives a negative code. The net effect, if all goes well, is that the pages addressed by URLs submitted to uinmyn-fetch-body.py show up, after privacy-protecting remailer random latencies. No record leaves the requester's site of who accessed the pages. Also provided here are minor support scripts to list the URLs in a given reply, and to insert page content into the browser-accessible cache provided by wwwoffle [2]. Return codes from uinmyn-do-aam-article.py are useful for procmail, which might be checking the same message for other hits. The following .procmailrc clause sequence will send the decrypted "inner posting" to local-recipient. :0fW | uinmyn-do-aam-article.py /path/to/uinmyn_pending_requests_db :0a ! local-recipient Out of respect for your privacy, uinmyn does not require you to access any web site for its installation or use (though you may if you wish: mailto:stealthsuite@nym.mixmin.net?subject=send%20index.html). Everything is right here in this posting. ABOUT THE CODE Succinctness and readability are given priority here over efficiency. If efficiency becomes an issue, there are lots of opportunities here for speedup. These scripts are meant mainly as hints for you to adapt to the needs of your particular case. But they could be used verbatim if you like. INSTALLATION Have python, gnupg, and mixmaster installed. Have the send(a)is-not-my.name public key on your gnupg keyring. Copy the scripts from below to somewhere on your executables path. Of course, you are taking a full feed of a.a.m at all times without interruption, separating wheat from chaff only after it's all behind closed doors. Otherwise, the world is informed about which articles you find interesting. Remember, long random latency is part of the price of anonymity. It can't be done with TOR or any other low-latency method. EXAMPLE Typing uinmyn-fetch-body.py db | mixmaster url(a)is-not-my.name http://www.banana.mixmin.net ^D will send a request for http://www.banana.mixmin.net. The key is added to db, which need not have existed beforehand. (It's plain ASCII, so you can look at it to better understand what's happening.) Later, in a directory full of fresh a.a.m articles, the command for f in *; do uinmyn-do-aam-article.py db < $f >> mbox; done will append the requested content to mbox if it has arrived. FOOTNOTES [1] http://www.is-not-my.name [2] World Wide Web OFFline Explorer http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/ BUGS Encryption/hsub keys are exposed briefly during a.a.m. processing. CHANGE LOG 0.06 Add time-stamps to database entries to facilitate removal of old, stale entries. Changed slogan from "Is this anonymous surfing, or what?". Documentation improvements. 0.05 Quote URL in uinmyn-do-aam-article.py against shell interpretation. 0.04 Did TODO item: Use PIPE for the gpg stdin in uinmyn-do-aam-article.py. (eliminating previous stupid size limit). 0.03 Add "decode=True" in uinmyn-to-wwwoffle-cache.py to capture coded files, such as .pdfs. Change the www.bananasplit.info reference to www.banana.mixmin.net. 0.02 Add a script to enter gotten pages into a local browser-accessible cache. Improvements to the documentation. Here are the scripts. 8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-------- #! /usr/bin/python # SYNOPSIS # uinmyn-fetch-body.py <pending-requests-dict> # DESCRIPTION # Reads URLs from standard input, one per line, generates a fresh # random key to encrypt the reply and for its hsub, adds the key and # the requested URLs to pending-requests-dict (creating it anew if # it doesn't exist), constructs and encrypts a request for # url(a)is-not-my.name, and writes it to standard output. from os import urandom from base64 import standard_b64encode import sys, os, time import pprint from subprocess import Popen, PIPE UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS = sys.argv[1] # same key for both encryption and hsub: key = standard_b64encode(urandom(15)) gpgproc = Popen('gpg -e -a -r send(a)is-not-my.name --trust-model always --no-emit-version --batch', shell=True, stdin=PIPE) gpgproc.stdin.write("KEY " + key + '\n') urls = [time.time()] # time-tag precedes the urls in the db entry for line in sys.stdin.readlines(): urls.append(line.rstrip()) gpgproc.stdin.write('SOURCE ' + line.rstrip() + '\n') gpgproc.stdin.close() # Not dealt with here: Mutually exclusive access to the # UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS database, as would be required if request # issuance might be concurrent with a.a.m. processing. if os.path.isfile(UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS): execfile(UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS) else: uinmyn_pending_requests = {} uinmyn_pending_requests[key] = urls new_upr_fd = open(UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS, 'w') new_upr_fd.write('uinmyn_pending_requests =\\\n') pprint.pprint(uinmyn_pending_requests,stream=new_upr_fd) 8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-------- #! /usr/bin/python # SYNOPSIS # uinmyn-do-aam-article.py <pending-requests-dict> # DESCRIPTION # Reads an article from standard input. If its Subject: might be an # hsub, check it against each key in pending-requests-dict in turn. # If a hit is found, decrypt the inner posting and write it to # standard output. import sys, os from hashlib import sha256 import email import pprint from subprocess import Popen, PIPE UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS = sys.argv[1] posting = email.message_from_file(sys.stdin) subject = posting.get('Subject') try: iv = subject[:16].decode('hex') except TypeError: sys.exit(1) # Not dealt with here: Mutually exclusive access to the # UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS database, as would be required if request # issuance might be concurrent with a.a.m. processing. if os.path.isfile(UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS): execfile(UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS) else: uinmyn_pending_requests = {} for key, urls in uinmyn_pending_requests.iteritems(): if subject == (iv+sha256(iv+key).digest()).encode('hex')[:48]: # Doing part of the job in shell: gpgproc = Popen('mkfifo $HOME/passwdf ; (echo ' + key + ' > $HOME/passwdf &); gpg --passphrase-fd 3 3<$HOME/passwdf --trust-model always --batch 2>/dev/null ; rm $HOME/passwdf', stdin=PIPE, shell=True) gpgproc.stdin.write(posting.get_payload()) # Other processing that could be done here: # Deal with discrepancies between requested and obtained URL lists. # Save the used key in an archive, rather than losing it forever. del uinmyn_pending_requests[key] new_upr_fd = open(UINMYN_PENDING_REQUESTS, 'w') new_upr_fd.write('uinmyn_pending_requests =\\\n') pprint.pprint(uinmyn_pending_requests,stream=new_upr_fd) sys.exit(0) sys.exit(1) 8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-------- #! /usr/bin/python # SYNOPSIS # uinmyn-list-gotten-urls.py # DESCRIPTION # List the URLs in the url(a)is-not-my.name "inner mail" on standard # input together with the sizes of the fetched pages. import sys, email pages = email.message_from_file(sys.stdin) for page in pages.get_payload(): print(page.get('Content-Description') + ', size = ' + repr(len(page.get_payload()))) 8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-------- #! /usr/bin/python # SYNOPSIS # uinmyn-to-wwwoffle-cache.py # DESCRIPTION # Given a (decrypted) url(a)is-not-my.name "inner posting", enter each # page that it contains into the wwwoffle cache, overlaying any # previous content having matching URLs. import sys, os, email from subprocess import Popen, PIPE pages = email.message_from_file(sys.stdin) for page in pages.get_payload(): p = Popen('wwwoffle-write \'' + page.get('Content-Description') + '\'', stdin=PIPE, shell=True) p.stdin.write('HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n') p.stdin.write('Content-Type: ' + page.get('Content-Type') + '\n\n') p.stdin.write(page.get_payload(decode=True)) p.stdin.close() p.wait() 8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-------- -- StealthMonger <StealthMonger(a)nym.mixmin.net> Long, random latency is part of the price of Internet anonymity. stealthmail: Hide whether you're doing email, or when, or with whom. mailto:stealthsuite@nym.mixmin.net?subject=send%20index.html Key: mailto:stealthsuite@nym.mixmin.net?subject=send%20stealthmonger-key -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8+ <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/> iEYEARECAAYFAk1+58QACgkQDkU5rhlDCl6zCACguZBtkNeT1e3AxjZfQFDeBEpg 6lQAnRsgP/u3PeMpufRfiVx2xrNWuUQM =jxyo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Torservers Foundation Meeting - Invitation 26.3. Dresden
by Eugen Leitl 15 Mar '11

15 Mar '11

----- Forwarded message from Moritz Bartl <moritz(a)torservers.net> -----

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15 Mar '11

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15 Mar '11

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Cell phones are 'Stalin's dream,' says free software movement founder
by Eugen Leitl 15 Mar '11

15 Mar '11

http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/news/2011/0314… Cell phones are 'Stalin's dream,' says free software movement founder Richard Stallman: iPhones and Androids are 'Big Brother' tracking devices By Jon Brodkin, Network World March 14, 2011 05:47 PM ET Richard Stallman Nearly three decades into his quest to rid the world of proprietary software, Richard Stallman sees a new threat to user freedom: smartphones. "I don't have a cell phone. I won't carry a cell phone," says Stallman, founder of the free software movement and creator of the GNU operating system. "It's Stalin's dream. Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop." Stallman firmly believes that only free software can save us from our technology, whether it be in cell phones, PCs, tablets or any other device. And when he talks about "free," he's not talking about the price of the software -- he's talking about the ability to use, modify and distribute software however you wish. Stallman founded the free software movement in the early- to mid-1980s with the creation of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, of which he is still president. ON BOARD: Microsoft: 'We love open source' When I asked Stallman to list some of the successes of the free software movement, the first thing that came up was Android -- not Google's version of Android, but rather a third-party version of the mobile OS in which all proprietary software has been stripped out. "It just recently became possible to run some very widely used phones with free software," Stallman said. "There's a version of Android called Replicant that can run on the HTC Dream phone without proprietary software, except in the U.S. In the U.S., as of a few weeks ago there was still a problem in some dialing library, although it worked in Europe. By now, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know." Although Android is distributed with free software licenses, Stallman notes that manufacturers can ship the devices with non-free executables, which users cannot replace "because there is a device in the phone that checks if the software is changed and won't let the modified executables run." Stallman calls it "tivoization," because TiVo uses free software but lays down hardware restrictions to prevent it from being altered. "If the manufacturer can replace the executable but you can't, then the product is a jail," he says. Theoretically, Stallman says, phones that use only free software can protect themselves from the danger of electronic eavesdropping. "If it's all free software, you can probably protect yourself from that, because that's caused by the software in the phone," he says. Ironically enough, Stallman was speaking to me on a cell phone. Not his own, of course, but one he borrowed from a friend in Spain while on a European speaking tour. Over the course of 38 minutes, our connection was lost five times, including just after Stallman's comments about electronic eavesdropping and free software for phones. We tried to connect again several hours later but were unable to complete the interview via phone. Stallman answered the rest of my questions over e-mail. Sacrificing convenience is something Stallman is used to. He won't use Windows or Mac, obviously, and even software such as Ubuntu, perhaps the most popular operating system based on GNU and the Linux kernel, does not meet his free software requirements. Few people are willing to make the sacrifices he will for the goal of software freedom, Stallman acknowledges. "The decisions anyone makes depend on values," he says. "And most people are taught to think about software purely as a matter of price and performance, not whether it respects your freedom. People who make decisions on those values will not make any sacrifice of convenience to get free software, whereas I am willing to work for years and years and years to have no proprietary software in my computer." Stallman does his computing on a Lemote Yeeloong laptop running gNewSense, a GNU/Linux distribution composed only of free software. "There are some things I can't do. I'm using a rather slow computer because it's the only laptop with a free BIOS," Stallman says. gNewSense is the only totally free distribution that will run on the Lemote, which has a MIPS-like processor, he says. The Lemote had come with another GNU/Linux distribution that included non-free software, and Stallman replaced it with gNewSense. Stallman, 57, experienced software sharing for the first time when he began working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971. The sharing community broke down in the early 1980s around the same time that Digital Equipment Corp. discontinued a mainframe hardware platform the community relied upon. Stallman could have joined the proprietary software world if he had been willing to "sign nondisclosure agreements and promise not to help my fellow hacker," he says. Instead, he pioneered the free software movement. Stallman is a fascinating figure in the world of computing, admired by many individuals and reviled by companies such as Microsoft which see a threat from software they can't make a profit from. Stallman has failed to break the Microsoft/Apple dominance of the desktop computer market, not to mention Apple's dominance of tablets. But the free software movement he created did lead to the proliferation of Linux-based servers which are prevalent in data centers and power much of the Internet. This is perhaps ironic because Stallman expresses resentment about the credit given to the Linux kernel at the expense of his own GNU operating system. Stallman says he is "somewhat" proud of the proliferation of free server software, "but I'm more concerned with the size of the problem that needs to be corrected than with how far we have already come." Free software in data centers is nice, but "with the goal of giving users freedom, their own desktops, laptops and phones are the computers that affect their freedom most." The focus is mainly on software rather than hardware, but the movement insists on "hardware that comes with specs so that we can write free software to support it fully," he says. "It is unconscionable to offer hardware for sale and refuse to tell the purchaser how to use it. This ought to be illegal." Before agreeing to an interview with Network World, Stallman demanded that this article use his preferred terminology -- e.g. "free software" instead of "open source" and "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux." He also requested that the interview be recorded and that, if the recording were distributed online, that it be done so in a format that works with free software. There are four essential software freedoms, Stallman explained. "Freedom Zero is the freedom to run the program as you wish. Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code, and change it so the program does your computing as you wish. Freedom 2 is the freedom to help others; that's the freedom to make and distribute exact copies when you wish. And Freedom 3 is the freedom to contribute to your community, which is the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions when you wish." Stallman came up with the term "copyleft" to indicate licenses that ensure free software code cannot be redistributed in proprietary products. The key to Stallman's philosophy is this: "Without those four freedoms, the owner controls the program and the programs control the users," he says. "So the program is simply an instrument of unjust power. The users deserve freedom to control their computing. A non-free program is a system of unjust power and shouldn't exist. The existence and use of non-free software is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem." "That problem" wasn't caused by one company in particular, but Microsoft is usually the most frequently criticized by people like Stallman. "They continue regarding us as their enemy," Stallman says. Ten years ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously called Linux a "cancer." Microsoft has softened its public tone since then, but Stallman is not impressed: "They have in some ways learned to be a bit more subtle but their goal is that people should use Windows and not a free operating system." After that thought, our phone connection was lost again. Other than Microsoft, Stallman calls out "Apple and Adobe, and Oracle and lots of others that make proprietary software and pressure people to use it." Google "does some good things and some bad," Stallman says. "It has released useful free software such as the WebM codec, and is moving YouTube to distribute that way. However, the new Google Art Project can only be used through proprietary software." Stallman is also at odds with some people in what is known as the open source community. Open source advocates clearly sprung out of the free software movement, and most open source software also counts as free software. But Stallman says that people who identify as open source advocates tend to view the access to source code as a practical convenience and ignore the ethical principles of software freedom. Various vendors have jumped on the open source bandwagon without embracing the principles that Stallman believes should be at the heart of free software. "I don't want to make this seem too one-sided," Stallman says. "Certainly a lot of people who hold open source views have worked on useful programs that are free and also some of those companies have funded work on useful programs that are free. So that work is good. But at the same time, at a deeper level, the focus on open source leads people's attention away from the idea that they deserve freedom." One of Stallman's targets is Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel and one of the most famous figures in the world of free software. Stallman and his crew worked on the GNU operating system for most of the 1980s, but there was one missing piece: a kernel, which provides resources from the hardware to programs that run on the computer. This gap was filled by Torvalds in 1991 when he developed Linux, a Unix-like kernel. Systems using the Linux kernel are usually called just "Linux," but Stallman has fought for years to get people to use his preferred term, "GNU/Linux." Stallman "wanted to make sure GNU got proper credit," says Miguel de Icaza of Novell, who created the free software program GNOME but has been criticized by Stallman for partnering with Microsoft and selling proprietary software. "When Linux came out, Richard didn't take it very seriously for a while, and he kept working on his own kernel. It was only when Linux took the spotlight that he felt, to some extent, his project had not been given enough credit. The problem is, what happened at the time was there was a new community that was created out of the blue that wasn't necessarily aligned with GNU." The GNU kernel, called Hurd, is still "under active development," according to the project's Web site. Torvalds' contribution to free software will be widely celebrated this year during the 20th anniversary of the Linux kernel. But Stallman won't be one of his cheerleaders, and it's not just because of the naming dispute. "I don't admire a person who says freedom is not important," Stallman says. "Torvalds set a bad example for the community by publicly using a non-free program for the maintenance of Linux (his kernel, which is his main contribution to the GNU/Linux system). I criticized him for this, and so did others. When he stopped, it was not by choice. More recently, he rejected [the] GPL version 3 for Linux because it protects the users' freedom from tivoization. His rejection of GPLv3 is why most Android phones are jails." Even Red Hat and Novell, known widely as open source supporters, don't get a ringing endorsement. "Red Hat partly supports free software. Novell much less," he says, noting that Novell has a patent agreement with Microsoft. Despite outward pessimism, Stallman does see a few positives spurred by his quest for software freedom. When he's not at his Cambridge, Mass., home, which is most of the time, Stallman is roaming the world giving speeches and holding discussions about free software. Before traveling to Spain, Stallman stopped off in London to give a speech in which he called Windows "malware," and met with a couple members of Parliament to explain free software issues. He often gets a better reception in Europe than at home. "In the U.S., awareness of free software has been almost completely pushed under the rug by open source. As a result, you'd never find people in any government position who'd want to talk to me," he says. Outside of North America, some governments are embracing free software. "I found out yesterday that in France, the state agencies are continuing to move to free software," he says. "There's no systematic policy requiring them to but they're doing so more and more. And in some countries, for instance in Ecuador, there is an explicit policy for state agencies to move to free software and any agency that wants to continue using non-free software has to apply for a temporary exception, permission to do so." Although Stallman didn't mention it, the Russian government is requiring agencies to replace proprietary software with free alternatives by 2015 in a bid to improve both economics and security, according to The Wall Street Journal. In addition to free software, Stallman is devoted to political issues, and writes a blog for The Huffington Post. In fact, he sees little distinction between the corporations threatening software freedom and "the scoundrels in Washington" who are beholden to corporate donations. In the recent Wisconsin union protests, Stallman sees something of his own spirit. "Sometimes freedom requires a sacrifice and most Americans are not willing to make any sacrifices for their freedom," he says. "But maybe the protesters in Wisconsin are starting to change that." Corporations and mass media "have to a large extent convinced Americans ... that they're not entitled to refuse businesses whatever businesses want. Well, we need a spirit of resistance in America. We need to recover the spirit of freedom with which we created the United States." Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin Read more about software in Network World's Software section.

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CRYPTO-GRAM, March 15, 2011
by Eugen Leitl 15 Mar '11

15 Mar '11

----- Forwarded message from Bruce Schneier <schneier(a)SCHNEIER.COM> -----

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Re: [Freedombox-discuss] ZRTP is free software, and is used
by Eugen Leitl 14 Mar '11

14 Mar '11

----- Forwarded message from Jay Sulzberger <jays(a)panix.com> -----

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