Re: [Foundation-l] CIA/NSA development of mediawiki
Brian wrote: That means I can clarify why my much hated factual correction was appropriate. Here was the original statement: If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure Let's briefly suppose that there are binaries for mediawiki (which is false - but suppose they only gave you byte code for mediawiki) and that the CIA had improved mediawiki and given you one. There is a crucial difference between the CIA giving you that binary and giving you source code - you can see the diffs in the source code and you can see the diffs in the binaries, but you cannot understand the diffs in the binaries. How the poster I replied to does not consider this distinction relevant is beyond me. I answered you privately on your reply to not feed the thread, but as you're continusly repeating it, I'm going to clarify it here. The ability to provide a mediawiki binary wasn't relevant to the point. And yes, it can be done (Zend Guard, giving a PHP extension...). My reply to Nikola was: You're right [in not trust it] if they handed you a improved binary, but they would provide *the source diff*, so there's no need to start being paranoic about the CIA altering MediaWiki in a fashion that will make it easier to spy its users ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] CIA/NSA development of mediawiki (was: Wikia leasing office space to WMF)
2009/1/25 Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com: Yeah, agreed. While on-topic for the list, it's off-topic for this thread. U.S. intelligence agency involvement in the development of open source products, especially media wiki, however *IS* a topic I am very much interested in seeing further discussion about; to that end I would much rather fork this thread into a different title than see it be killed totally. Well, SELinux is widely-available and no-one's found the s3kr1t code that funnels your keystrokes back to the NSA, and you bet they've looked. The main reason people know about SELinux in practice is how to switch it off, but anyway ... Has anyone actually asked the CIA for MediaWiki extensions and enhancements? It'd be worth asking. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] CIA/NSA development of mediawiki (was: Wikia leasing office space to WMF)
That means I can clarify why my much hated factual correction was appropriate. Here was the original statement: If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure Let's briefly suppose that there are binaries for mediawiki (which is false - but suppose they only gave you byte code for mediawiki) and that the CIA had improved mediawiki and given you one. There is a crucial difference between the CIA giving you that binary and giving you source code - you can see the diffs in the source code and you can see the diffs in the binaries, but you cannot understand the diffs in the binaries. How the poster I replied to does not consider this distinction relevant is beyond me. On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 24, 2009, at 2:41 PM, Alex wrote: I'm criticizing the switch from Wikia leasing office space to WMF to Is the CIA evil? I just responded to the most recent email in my inbox; I thought that would be more appropriate than responding to all 17 CIA/NSA-related emails. I was not criticizing you in particular. The topic of this thread is Wikia leasing office space to WMF, that should be rather clear from the subject. And the topic of the list is Wikimedia related issues. Its almost on topic for the list (MediaWiki is at least mentioned occasionally), its certainly not at all related to the topic of the thread. Brian wrote: It was a clear factual error which I corrected. If you aren't going to criticize the original comment you have no basis for criticizing the correction. At any rate, what exactly is the topic of this thread, in your opinion? On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Alex mrzmanw...@gmail.com wrote: Brian wrote: If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure PHP is an interpreted language. Surely you wouldn't use someone elses byte code. On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Nikola Smolenski wrote: Given that we know that NSA conducts massive illegal spying operations, there is possibility that selinux is altered in a fashion that will make it easier for NSA to spy on selinux' users. I don't know what are CIA's contributions to MediaWiki, but unless it is trivial to review them, I would not accept them. If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure. You could very well be suspicious about it. But we're talking about open source. They would be providing the changes, which are to be reviewed, like any other code, or perhaps even more, due to coming from the CIA. Take into account that CIA and NSA need good software, too. So if they add a backdoor, they would need to add it *and* at the same time make it easy to protect from it, as they wouldn't want their own systems spied by their own rootkit (and someone will end up forgetting to apply it). Instead, contributing good fixes, make everything easier. OTOH I encourage you to review selinux. That would make a great heading 'Nikola Smolenski discovers NSA backdoor on Linux code' This is getting rather off-topic, especially for this thread, and possibly for the list as well. -- Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l -- Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man) Yeah, agreed. While on-topic for the list, it's off-topic for this thread. U.S. intelligence agency involvement in the development of open source products, especially media wiki, however *IS* a topic I am very much interested in seeing further discussion about; to that end I would much rather fork this thread into a different title than see it be killed totally. -dan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] CIA/NSA development of mediawiki (was: Wikia leasing office space to WMF)
2009/1/25 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: Has anyone actually asked the CIA for MediaWiki extensions and enhancements? It'd be worth asking. We don't know much about what they have done but most of their developments are more likely to be of interest to corporate wikis than wikipedia. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] CIA/NSA development of mediawiki (was: Wikia leasing office space to WMF)
2009/1/25 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/1/25 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: Has anyone actually asked the CIA for MediaWiki extensions and enhancements? It'd be worth asking. We don't know much about what they have done but most of their developments are more likely to be of interest to corporate wikis than wikipedia. That'd still be damn fine for MediaWiki and its adoption. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] CIA/NSA development of mediawiki (was: Wikia leasing office space to WMF)
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 9:19 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/1/25 geni geni...@gmail.com: 2009/1/25 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com: Has anyone actually asked the CIA for MediaWiki extensions and enhancements? It'd be worth asking. I suspect any significant changes they have made will not be made available for release until long past the time they are useful to the MediaWiki developers. Keep in mind that Intellipedia is designed to contain, distribute in a limited manner and facilitate the analysis of classified information. Details on how it does that are unlikely to be forthcoming, right? What I'd be most interested in is the improvements they've made to the many en.wp articles included in Intellipedia. Nathan -- Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
