RFC: backporting GEOM to the 4.x branch

Martin P. Hellwig mhellwig at xs4all.nl
Thu Mar 3 02:58:55 PST 2005


Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai wrote:
-On [20050303 07:57], Matthew Dillon (dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:

 Personally speaking I have no problem making ultra encryption available
 to the general public, but I do believe (personally speaking) that the
 *default* should be something slightly less secure just so criminals
 and terrorists (at least the stupid ones, which is most or they wouldn't
 be criminals or terrorists), don't get an automatic boost from our work.


Since when did we dictate policy on this level?  Any serious organised
criminal or terrorist works in a team/cell and has the brain/clue to bump it
to another level from the default.  So I really think your reasoning here
holds no ground.
So why are we even being concerned about this given all the other security
stuff we have in base already?
Being unfortunately enough to have some experience on this subject, well 
the terrorist / intelligence part at least not the other stuff, I would 
like to add the following in this discussion.
"Bad-Boys" that could benefit from higher security should be:
- Experienced enough to use DragonFlyBSD
- Unexperienced enough not to know how to increase the security level
- Organized enough to benefit from encrypted communication in whatever form
- Not to organized, otherwise there would be a communications 
specialized that at least knows how to increase security.

That makes the target audience who cold get an automatic boost very 
small. Although personally speaking the *default* should be the one that 
is the most simple/robust/adjustable.
Personally speaking if this by any chance affects the security level, 
thats fine with me as long as its public knowledge and there are way to 
adjust it.
I prefer not to mix politics and/or religious believes with unix, it's a 
bad match IMHO ....... vi of course ;-)

--
mph




More information about the Kernel mailing list