Re: Pentagon linked to shaming attack on RMS

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

I agree it's unlikely that someone at the Pentagon would have interest 
in arranging any of this, but we've seen weirder things happen, e.g. at 
the Open Technology Fund. USDS has hired many hackers and has been loud 
about it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-biden-digital-service-idINKBN29Q08Q

I believe a former president explained in a recent book of theirs what 
the idea was. Cf.
https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/7409/2220

Il 03/04/21 05:17, Jacob Bachmeyer ha scritto:
> I do not know how familiar you are with ongoing political controversies 
> in the USA, but there has been considerable controversy over claims of 
> politicizing the civil service

For this reason, while it's probably unwise to ask any USA federal 
authority whether they know about certain actions by one of their 
employees/whatever ostensibly conducted in their private time, it might 
be fair game to file FOIA requests to find out whether there was any 
unseemly coordination or use of government resources. I don't know about 
precedents in USA but we regularly have to do this in the EU because the 
European Commission constantly conspires with copyright industry lobbies:
https://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/article_the_copyright_directive
https://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/eeas_letter_to_the_office_of_the

Ideally evidence would be collected *before* launching accusations 
against people. Also, MIT was also largely funded by the Pentagon for a 
long while, so if we start a tally of how many GNU or Debian 
contributors lived under Pentagon-paid roofs the exercise might get 
tedious fast.

Federico