Usually I stay away from politics, but this news is a bit too creepy to me. I would have never thought that Universities and schools some day will be seen as a target for espionage. The FBI believes they are.

Scientists working on public Universities publish the results of their work and everybody can read it. Those publications have always been available on the whole planet and with the Internet the distribution of this material is even easier, which in itself is a good thing. Knowledge needs to be universally available, as that's the only way for the ongoing development of mankind. There is too much dumbness in this world. People who lack education don't know how to interpret things they see and hear and might eventually follow the wrong leaders.

These days a growing number of people seem to think that dangerous technologies are better kept away. There is a lot of talk going on about protecting the security of X, Y, and Z. You can insert your favorite item you want to protect. Who determines what a dangerous technology is? Is it only stuff that allows for the development of more powerful weaponry, is it something that creates vast amounts of cheap electric power without burning oil, is it crypto stuff useful to protect privacy (your own, your trade secrets, the secrets of any government), or might it even be software to streamline manufactoring processes of any kind?

I'm not a scientist working on anything security related, but still I have been affected by crypto regulations and fear that trade secrets might be disclosed in a jurisdiction other than the one where my client is located.

Since the very sad incident called 9/11 government agencies in a growing number of countries seem to be on a frenzy to protect everything and everybody of anything and anybody. What is required to put some rationale in to stop all that security hysteria? There is always a risk involved in anything one does. All that security talk on all channels apparently makes people believe more and more that everybody is under some kind of attack from "the others".

When will the development of Open Source software become outlawed? After all more and more important software that drives business and manufacturing processes, finance operations and more uses Open Source.

Isn't publishing the source a means to avoid manipulation, a means to create trust? Source code contains knowledge the same way as a scientific paper does. And there is a lot of software that can be used to protect or attack other systems out there. What about virtual rootkits or the Blue Pill technology?

Links:

• FBI seeks to enroll local universities
• FBI targets universities in new scheme to recruit informers
• FBI warns colleges of terror threat
• FBI fordert US-Hochschulen zur Spionageabwehr auf (German, English translation)

Responses[1]

Posted by Stephan Schwab on June 27, 2007 2:02:45 PM EST #