crimea – Techdirt (original) (raw)

What Happens When The US Government Tries To Take On The Open Source Community?

from the maybe-we-are-about-to-find-out dept

Last year, Microsoft bought the popular code repository GitHub. As Techdirt wrote at the time, many people were concerned by this takeover of a key open source resource by a corporate giant that has frequently proved unfriendly to free software. In the event, nothing worrying has happened — until this:

GitHub this week told Anatoliy Kashkin, a 21-year-old Russian citizen who lives in Crimea, that it had “restricted” his GitHub account “due to US trade controls”.

As the ZDNet article explains, a user in Iran encountered the same problems. Naturally, many people saw this as precisely the kind of danger they were worried about when Microsoft bought GitHub. The division’s CEO, Nat Friedman, used Twitter to explain what exactly was happening, and why:

To comply with US sanctions, we unfortunately had to implement new restrictions on private repos and paid accounts in Iran, Syria, and Crimea.

Public repos remain available to developers everywhere — open source repos are NOT affected.

He went on to note:

The restrictions are based on place of residence and location, not on nationality or heritage. If someone was flagged in error, they can fill out a form to get the restrictions lifted on their account within hours.

Users with restricted private repos can also choose to make them public. Our understanding of the law does not give us the option to give anyone advance notice of restrictions.

We’re not doing this because we want to; we’re doing it because we have to. GitHub will continue to advocate vigorously with governments around the world for policies that protect software developers and the global open source community.

The most important aspect of this latest move by GitHub is that open source projects are unaffected, and that even those who are hit by the bans can get around them by moving from private to public repositories. Friedman rightly points out that as a company based in the US, GitHub doesn’t have much scope for ignoring US laws.

However, this incident does raise some important questions. For example, what happens if the US government decides that it wants to prevent programmers in certain countries from accessing open source repositories on GitHub as well? That would go against a fundamental aspect of free software, which is that it can be used by anyone, for anything — including for bad stuff.

This question has already come up before, when President Trump issued the executive order “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain“, a thinly-disguised attack on the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. As a result of the order, Google blocked Huawei’s access to updates of Android. Some Chinese users were worried they were about to lose access to GitHub, which is just as crucial for software development in China as elsewhere. GitHub said that wasn’t the case, but it’s not hard to imagine the Trump administration putting pressure on GitHub’s owner, Microsoft, to toe the line at some point in the future.

More generally, the worry has to be that the US government will attempt to dictate to all global free software projects who may and may not use their code. That’s something that the well-known open source and open hardware hacker Bunnie Huang has written about at length, in a blog post entitled “Open Source Could Be a Casualty of the Trade War“. It’s well-worth reading and pondering, because the relatively minor recent problems with GitHub could turn out to be a prelude to a far more serious clash of cultures.

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Filed Under: crimea, doj, open source software, sanctions, trade wars, us sanctions
Companies: github, microsoft

Wacky Snowden Haters Pile On The Bandwagon Claiming Snowden Is Somehow To Blame For Russia In Crimea

from the wtf dept

So, over the weekend, the NSA’s chief external propagandist, Rep. Mike Rogers, made the ridiculous claim that Ed Snowden was somehow to blame for Russia’s aggressive actions against Ukraine. It would appear that the usual crew of Snowden haters (who never seem to have any evidence beyond “hunches”) have gleefully jumped onto that bandwagon, insisting that Snowden must be helping the Russians evade NSA surveillance. Based simply on (unproven) claims that the US intelligence community was somewhat taken by surprise by Russian moves in Crimea and Ukraine, folks like Joshua Foust and John Schindler — both of whom have been leading the anti-Snowden conspiracy theories since about 3 seconds after Snowden was revealed — are claiming that it’s somehow obvious that Snowden must be working with the Russians to reveal the NSA’s surveillance capabilities and how to get around them. Because apparently, Russian intelligence is so incompetent that they couldn’t figure things out without the help of an American.

At best, these two seem guilty of quite an extreme form of confirmation bias. At worst, they seem to be pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories, based on absolutely nothing. The idea that Vladimir Putin and the FSB had to wait until Ed Snowden was effectively handed to them by the Americans pulling his passport (seems like Foust and Schindler conveniently forget that part…) in order to hide their plans to annex Crimea and get aggressive towards Ukraine seems positively unbelievable. However, it does show the extreme lengths some are willing to go to in order to smear Snowden based on no proof at all.

Update: Meanwhile, it appears that plenty of folks who actually work in intelligence say that Snowden has nothing to do with the events in Crimea.

Filed Under: crimea, ed snowden, john schindler, joshua foust, mike rogers, russia, ukrain

Mike Rogers Says Snowden's To Blame For Russian's Aggressive Actions Against Ukraine

from the being-talked-down-to-by-a-mouth-breather dept

Mike Rogers is still willing to spread his stupidity to any new outlet that will have him. Despite the NSA and FBI being unable to find any evidence that Snowden colluded with Russian intelligence, Rogers continues to insist the former analyst is a Russian spy.

Knowing that evidence (or lack thereof) has no bearing on Rogers’ statements explains his most recent assertion, one that offers a bunch of speculation in service of linking the name “Snowden” with “bad things the Russian government is doing.” (via Crooks and Liars)

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Sunday former National Security Agency contractor and fugitive Edward Snowden is “actually supporting in an odd way this very activity of brazen brutality and expansionism of Russia. He needs to understand that. And I think Americans need to understand that….”

How exactly is Snowden “supporting” the brazen brutality of the Russian government? Well, when pressed, Rogers merely reiterates his opening statement (equally as questionable) that “no counterintelligence official” believes “today” that Snowden is not under the influence of Russian intelligence. His follow-up non-explanation is nothing more than a suggestion that “we” (which presumably means the wide swath of supporters behind Rogers’ blustery rhetoric — also equally as questionable) need to determine when he fell under the spell of Russian intelligence in order to… well… it’s not entirely clear.

Rogers continues by saying he doesn’t believe anything Snowden has said about his relationship to the Russian government and, mistaking his personal opinion for solidly researched facts, claims that because Snowden “lied” about his situation, there can be no doubt that he is pretty much directly responsible for Russia’s aggressive response to the situation in Ukraine.

By the time Rogers finishes talking, we’re all a little dumber — except maybe Mike Rogers, who apparently hasn’t hit rock bottom in terms of wild speculation and baseless accusations. Rogers claims everyone who matters (the unnamed but totally legitimate “counterintelligence officials”) agrees with his version of Snowden’s activities and motivations.

Sure, you can find some people who think Snowden is a spy or being operated by Russian intelligence (but they’re few and far between), but one of those making this assertion is the someone who thinks a blog filled with his own tweets is defamatory. While other officials have made comparisons to spies when discussing Snowden’s actions, few have been willing to claim (at least not publicly) that the former analyst is now a tool of Russian intelligence.

If the NSA wants to save itself, it may want to find a way to gag Rogers, who seems willing to undermine any respect the agency reclaims while turning himself into a pro-intelligence caricature.

Filed Under: crimea, ed snowden, mike rogers, russia, ukraine