Re: Pentagon linked to shaming attack on RMS

[Jean Louis]

* Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki@gmail.com> [2021-04-08 14:55]:
> I agree it's unlikely that someone at the Pentagon would have interest in
> arranging any of this

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There is no thing that Pentagon does not have interest in. It is good
if you review few past decades of world events. There are strategies
for future, probably for next 50-100 years. I can in this moment think
of spying as a major tool. We can think of PRISM, Snowden, we can
think of CIA planting backdoors, Intel management engine, we can think
of crypto limitations on export, we can think that future spying is
prime defense for every Orvellian government, destroying free software
goes along the strategy very well, and slowly slowly encryption will
not be any more private, there will be backdoors for governments and
private corporations.

Of course I cannot know that, I don't work in Pentagon, but I can
observe what is going on. 

, 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

Our apologies, the content cannot be accessed, Reuters allows me to
read it only if I don't use Tor. Maybe that is one of reasons why
defense is interested in destroying good ideas we spread in free
software.

> 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

I am not going to read that much of politics.

> 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.

That is one good way. Provided one trusts the government to provide
information and to record information in certain place. Which one
cannot do, it is impossible to trust one's own government, unless you
govern yourself.

Good is to report the matter to federal inspectors and get a proper
feedback on that specific matter.

> 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

I just said, one cannot trust government.

> Ideally evidence would be collected *before* launching accusations
> against people.

For that specific person, evidence is in the public mailing lists,
unless the defendant wish to say it was not him, it was somebody with
his name, and using his email address, something like.

> 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.

At beginning of your article you said you don't know why would
Pentagon be interested, but here, MIT is largely funded, so is that
not a relation there in open to assume that Pentagon does have
interest in what is happening in software world, directly or
indirectly?

Jean

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