Linux Users - You Have The Right To Remain Silent, Anything You Say...

Not to mention out of date.

We are no longer a bunch of silly geeks in some back room staring at monitors. One of the larger users of Linux is the US Federal government, including DOD. Also worth mentioning is the large number of state and local governments using Linux and OSS in some fashion. And need I remind you that of such corporate entities as IBM, Google and others who are unlikely to stay still and accept this outlaw scenario in silence.

Helios is taking a limited judicial decision about applications and extrapolating to nations and continents. He really needs to calm down.

Much as I respect Ken, his energy, and his efforts, I have to agree -- he is trying to employ one of the weakest forms of paranoid logic : This happened, so it must mean...

Sure, terrorists probably are out there using Linux. Terrorists are certainly out there using Windows. I'd be shocked if a number of well-heeled and tech-savvy terrorists aren't toting nifty PowerBooks around.

There's also a good chance that they use cell phones, paper, pens, paper clips, most makes of auto, etc.

Terrorists probably use most of the things that everybody else uses. Lots of people use Linux for reasons that make a lot of sense. Terrorists probably use Linux for reasons that make a lot of sense.

Have to agree with dino here.

I am have seen on the news that the taliban uses toyota trucks.

so does that mean they will be outlawed?

don't doubt that microsoft has met with key senators trying to sell them on the concept though - they will do anything for their bottom line no matter how ethically wrong it is they only care about one thing and that is getting windows forced on everyone. I think that is the real crime here - we are all being forced to use windows at our companies everyday whether we need to or not to do our job.

Even Fidel Castro's Cuba and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela are switching over to Open Source software. See http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/19/1213245&ti... and http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1535 While the dictatorial leaders of these two countries are not exactly on the friendliest terms with the U.S., these two countries are a far-cry from being "Axis-of-Evil" terrorist nations.

Relating to South America and FOSS Peru itself was in the news recently, what with the horrible earthquake and the comments here on LXer following Stallman's statement regarding the big quake during his Peruvian visit.

Ken,

I believe you made the mistake of making veiled accusations. If there is substantial proof that the criminalizing of Linux is in the works, then you'll have to present that to your audience. Otherwise, the perception is that you fit the title of this thread.

Unfortunately, we humans don't make decisions based on the truth, but on our perception of the truth (perception is reality.)

If no hard evidence exists, or if you are not in a position to present it, then it's best to be patient and argue your case at the opportune moment.

Just my 2c.

While not a conspiracy theorist, I am a firm proponent that you only have to be right once for paranoia to pay for itself. A court system already friendly with Microsoft, the executive branch using spurious logic to validate their need of warrant less wiretapping and congress buying it lock stack and barrel. The later by the way expressly outlawed for the executive branch after Nixon.

How much of a real stretch of imagination would it take to see something along these lines come to fruition? Could it be challenged in the court system, probably. Would it give Linux a black eye? Definitely. YOUR congressman, senators, and most certainly your president (and mine) is already in the pocket of special interest groups some of who would like nothing better than for Linux to disappear.

I would hope that it would not come to pass, however hope floats very few boats.

Hmmmm...I suppose you'd have to outlaw open source BSD, too. For the purpose of terrorizing, if one really wanted to, even Syllable or Haiku would suffice. They have SSL and GnuPG, too, don't they?

azerthoth -

Sounds like you don't understand the way our legal system works. The court system doesn't initiate actions and it only makes decisions if asked.

Cases are initiated and conducted by advocates. If desired, decision-making is handed over to a jury.

In short, IBM has the best lawyers Microsoft can't buy and the law still matters.

Far fetched, possibly. But one thing I do know, the impossible happened in Australia. When pressed, our prime minister John Howard did indeed sell Australia for s few trinkets, and Australian copyright is substantially the same as US copyright Law.

Indeed, precisely because of this, an Australian citizen, who has never been to the US, was deported to the US to face prosecution in a US court for breach of US copyright law.

So the impossible does indeed happen.

dino, I wasnt counting on the courts to substantiate the action. The impetus for the action though will be from either the legislative or executive branch if it were to happen. With the way the supreme court is loaded right now an appeal in that direction is uncertain too, just look at last years ruling on eminent domain.

I would have thought that rather than going for a total ban on Linux, if the plotting is happening as helios describes, that Microsoft would move to make "non-cooperative distros" illegal. So you could have any Linux as long as it was Suse, Linspire or Xandros (eek! what a thought?). The others would not be banned outright but made illegal for connection to the WWW/US Infrastructure, thus making them effectively obsolete. (If such a thing were enforcable).

Unless things have gotten seriously out of hand (and I do wonder sometimes), this whole scenario is pretty far fetched (and I speak as one who has yet to hear an explanation as to why the moonlanding pictures have so many inconsistencies and who does not believe that Islamic terrorists carried out 9/11).

There is no way to know what kind of backdoors have been mandated into Windows by various powerful groups who would want that very, very much.

What kinds of deals might Microsoft enter into to guarantee their market share? Some days I just don't want to think about it.

How's that for far-fetched and paranoid?

>one who has yet to hear an explanation as to why the moonlanding pictures have so many inconsistencies

Green cheese has very tricky photographic properties.

Not a good idea imho.

I think it's far more likely that F/OSS will not become illegal itself, but that through corruption and "terrorist" FUD on a national scale, "Trusted Computing" will become the norm, and without closed "trusted" binaries and closed "trusted" ROMs a-la Tivo, "we" will not be allowed to participate.

While _technically_ this is certainly far-fetched and paranoid, I recall how many people thought it was insane when all telephone systems in and through America were legally required to be remotely tapable from Ft. Mead. Yet it has been up and working for a decade, as we know by the "uproar" when someone finally documented that AT&T's entire internet backbone traffic was being mirrored back to the Fed.Gov.

Well yea, they _have_ to. It's the law.

Nice post, up to this bit:

Quoting:Well yea, they _have_ to. It's the law.

No.They have to be able to, in case some G-man shows up carrying a valid warrant for a few bits of the data. They are under no obligation to mirror all their traffic to the feds.

I agree with your assertion that it certainly is against what most people think of as the "law", especially the 4th Amendment.

What I was trying to say is that no one should have been surprised, since that capacity had to exist by law.

But I am not going to say that there isn't some provision of the Patriot acts that weren't used to strong-arm AT&T into providing the feed, while a warrant would be issued later for anything found that might actually be put to use in court.

I don't want to paint AT&T as good guys, but I don't also want to pretend they did it because they wanted to. I don't know. But I do know that those who were receiving that feed _want_ it. Badly. Badly enough to twist any law they want and get away with it.