[H-GEN] Legislation to support open source software.

[Christopher Biggs]

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Robert Brockway <robert at timetraveller.org> moved upon the face of the 'Net and spake thusly:

> I have been told the government of Sweden (which has yet to move towards
> OSS in any meaningful way afaik) identified foreign closed-source
> software as a potential threat to national security.  They were concerned
> that if their relationship with the United States soured that they might
> find themselves either cut off from security updates or even the subject
> of trojans in the code[1].  
....

> [1] Conspiracy theorists love this one of course.  I have never heard of
> any evidence that anything like this has been introduced into a Microsoft
> product 

I can't say for sure about for microsoft[2], but it HAS been done.

The NSA induced Swiss crypto hardware manufacturer _Crypto_AG_ to put
backdoors in all their products from the 1970s onwards, until they
were busted in 1992.

And prior to the introduction of DES, many commercial cipher machines
were based on the Enigma cipher, which the USA/UK spooks quietly
declined to mention that they had cracked wide open since about 1941.

--cjb

[2] modulo the inconclusive 'nsakey' affair.


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