Steven Hamilton mongrol@identi.ca

FSF's email self-defense guide https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/ #privacy #gnupg

One would think in the future we'd all use metric system....

I think, frankly, that the CLA situation isn't really the cause of systemd to begin and compete with upstart, but the CLA situation is a symptom of the types of problems that Canonical, Ltd. causes with its policies.

Canonical, Ltd. insists on control of every single project for which its a major contributor. I heard a rumor years ago (when Canonical, Ltd. was just getting started) that Shuttleworth thought his company could be successful easily if he could just "make himself upstream from Debian".

This way of thinking permeates his company. If Canonical, Ltd. can't be the primary developer, it seeks way to abandon a project. That goes for bzr, Mir, upstart, all of it.

The sad thing about this is that when Canonical, Ltd. "gives up" on a package, there's no hope. I think developers at other companies can sense this.

Lennart is a hard guy for some to deal with (I actually like him a lot myself, but I see why people find him frustrating), but even so, he does understand how to lead a Free Software project, and he puts the project first, his company second. Other developers can sense this, and that culture permeates systemd.

Innocent people are being spied on all over the world.  That means you.  And your family.  Your kids.  Your Mom.  Even Grandpa.  

Do you text?  Do your teenagers text?  Would you be happy if the provocative photo your 13 year old daughter sent to her 13 year old boyfriend was secretly intercepted by the American spy agency NSA and filed it in perpetuity in their storage facility?   Or shared with its Five Eyes "partner" CSEC?  
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/top-spy-won-t-answer-questions-about-g20-surveillance-1.2444004

How do you know what those shadowy people who have invaded your child's privacy are doing with that photograph?  Or what are they doing with those totally innocent naked baby bath photos you sent to your Mom?  There are a lot of people employed by CSEC.  How many are predators?  The very nature of spying is predatory.    

Who can access this information that is being sucked up all over the Internet?  
We don't know.  
Whoever they are, whatever they do is being hidden behind a screen of smoke and mirrors they pretend is for "National Security."  If the civil rights and personal security of innocent citizens is sacrificed, what kind of National security is it? 
 
Who watches the watchers?  When governments pretend they are NOT doing such things, anything can happen.   The only reason Canadians are even aware of this is because a courageous young man named Edward Snowden was willing to sacrifice his privileged life to tell us.    

All over the world, innocent law abiding people are having their civil rights callously violated as their text messages are being vacuumed up wholesale by NSA to peruse at their leisure.

In Canada we recently learned that our own spy agencies allowed (asked?) NSA to spy on Canadians at the G20.  Without probable cause to get a warrant, the Canadian RCMP, CSIS and CSEC were not able to do this themselves without breaking Canadian law.  
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/new-snowden-docs-show-u-s-spied-during-g20-in-toronto-1.2442448

The "Lawful Access" legislation the Harper Government keeps trying to pass would make it legal for our government to spy on innocent Canadians.  It would make this legal.

The Canadian Charter of Rights And Freedoms exists to protect the civil rights of Canadians from just such government abuse of citizens. This is why it is so important that governments must not be allowed to spy on citizens without probable cause.  There must be good reason they can present to a court, there must be evidence of wrongdoing before the state should be allowed to strip away any citizen's right to privacy. 
  
Law abiding citizens should not have to worry that the government is reading their emails or text messages, or amassing their meta data.  

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep

BTW, here's hoping for similar advances (I know they're underway) in a Jabber/XMPP infrastructure for Debian \o/

Maybe even a pump.debian.org in the future? :p