Anyone else skeptical of the motivation?

http://www.zdnet.com/homeland-securi...ty-7000031949/

I mean, us Linux users are already considered "extremists" by the US military (NSA). If we use Tor, we're doubly extreme.

http://www.zdnet.com/nsa-targets-lin...rt-7000031241/

Maybe this is just another of many situations where one executive department is completely out of step with another.

My guess is "HeartBleed! OMG! Something must be done! This is something, therefore we must do this".

It actually doesn't look that bad, although perhaps it's not the best use of Americans' tax dollars.

If the article is correct that it's "a service for checking out your open-source code" then there isn't really anything evil they can do with it: the code is already freely accessible, so the comments on that article about "hand[ing] over my source code" don't really make sense.

"Over-arching these concerns" ... I think, in a way that we are reluctant to admit the very-craven yet very-human importance of ... is the reality that:
Maybe we don't like to admit just how much human influence "#CLASSIFIED#ions of Dollars" has, both upon our national decision-making and upon the many pigs who dine in secret, but maybe it's time that we started contemplating just how much this is a critical vulnerability in our perhaps well-intentioned system.

Face it: knowing that Uncle Sugar is a figment of politics, but that he has vast amounts of Dollars in his pocket, what are you gonna tell your Uncle? Sure... you're gonna tell him that the best way to "Make America Safe(st)™" is to do whatever thing "Makes You Rich(er)(est)™." (Tell me that you're feelin' altruistic and patriotic, and I'll tell you that you're a liar.)

But ... real National Security is never quite that easy. "Easy targets" will never do. Not if you are serious. (Which, let's face it, you might not be.) "Real Security" is hard, and it's never as Profitable as other alternatives.

Should I send them my hello.c file, which I have cunningly hacked to output "Hello, Brian!" instead of "Hello, World!"? Would that make me a terrorist suspect?

That's one reason why I politely declined an offer from a college professor, oh so long ago, which would have required "my first" security clearance. It was a life-course setting, split-second decision that I do not regret. I decided that I really didn't want to have a job that I could never tell anyone else about, outside of work, and which would only pay "government pay scale" in exchange for whatever it put you through.

I guessed also that, once you had a clearance, you really couldn't work outside of those cloistered halls because there would always be people (officially) eavesdropping on you to find out if you might be spilling any beans. And, there would always be the possibility that you might be accused of doing so even if you hadn't ... and you couldn't tell anyone outside that "peculiar fraternity," even as no one inside would believe you, and so you'd go to jail anyway. Your job, and every other job you ever had, would have "strings attached." Big, fat cables with hangman's knots in them. No thanks.

I really do admire the people who said "yes," and I am, in fact, grateful for them. But I'm always reminding myself that they work for ... Congress, and for Leeches. Therefore, if you could actually do your job, as you really know how to do it, things would be just-swell. But how often would you? I'll never know, by choice, and I really don't think that I want to.

However, I meant what I said in that callout. I know you're listening, I know you THANKS can't answer, unless FOR you've hacked THE into my computer, which I know no one would ever do, but I know GOOD you're listening WORDS! anyway.

They must be extremists themselves, then. But that's nothing new.

They also forgot the best C static analyzer.

The reason for the extremist label is probably that they can't insert a backdoor into open source software. They can't trust you if they can't spy on everything you do 24/7.

"Never say never" when it comes to NSA.

However ... it's time to start pushing-back against the notion that "spying 24/7" really is "necessary" for national security, or, for that matter, the notion that such a practice "improves" the situation instead of doing the opposite.

If you're generating all this "snoopy data," well, that data is now exposed, and it is being cataloged somewhere, and whatever hole you poked-through the infrastructure in order to do it will, in due time, be discovered by someone else. Anytime you poke a hole in a boat, no matter how small and "insignificant" the hole may seem to be, it is Never A Good Thing. Anytime you make a copy of something that really didn't need to be copied, you have created a vulnerability. Anytime you enable another means of "secret" copying, well, these things have a nasty way of not staying "secret," and you won't know that your "secret" has been compromised. No, not even NSA.

But ... nobody's being the devil's advocate here. There's no jester, telling the King to his face that his royal ideas are full of crap, even though this might be precisely what the King needs most to hear. (Which is why the Jester was often the King's most-loyal advisor.) The only voices that these people get to hear are voices that are urging them to Secretly Spend More Money. The only thing they get to hear are reassurances that, "yes, NOBUS = Nobody But U.S." will ever know. Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain . . .

Massive amounts of public money are being spent, we don't get to know how much, and we don't get to know what it's being spent on, and no one who does know these things has any motivation whatsoever except to insist, "spend more!" Human nature does the rest, and we all suffer for it.

Please submit your credit card number and security code to me, and I will make sure that it is not compromised!