tomslee

I do agree with your final sentence. At least, I think he knows the privacy/surveillance problems with SAAS and so has turned away from the Web (I heard he doesn't use browsers?) but would still like to see software as a liberating path forward. If you work on a self-contained computer, I suspect he is right.

smhenderson: as a regular emacs user, I certainly agree that Richard Stallman has many valuable achievements to his name. I don't hate and despise him at all. But he is also someone who speaks bluntly: I'm sure (if he ever hears about it, which is doubtful) he can handle a little blunt writing in response.

Nadya: thanks for the reply.

My comment about GNU/Linux was maybe too sarcastic, but in the article to which I was responding, Stallman did write "I developed the GNU operating system, which is often called Linux", which you have to admit is a bizarre statement.

But I really don't think I mistake free/libre for free/gratis. Even if a web service is built on FOSS, you cannot see if it is tracking you, any more than I can tell what data is in a LibreOffice spreadsheet. Surely the NSA open source effort demonstrates that in spades.

As for the alternative solution: I do agree with Stallman's third suggestion: surveillance (both corporate and state) is a legal and political problem which needs to be seen in that light.

It's exactly Apache's known-good status that makes it a point of leverage. Surely the pragmatic thing to do is to put pressure on organizations that you think may respond, rather than organizations that you know will not. I really don't understand why everyone is saying that Apache's hosting of this project is irrelevant and useless to the NSA. Would you say the same about other projects that Apache hosts?

mpyne. I expressed it badly - I did not mean to say that open source developers are supplying the NSA with Accumulo, just that Apache is supplying the NSA with a useful service by hosting Accumulo as a project (and that for some reason open source developers are OK with this in a way that they would not be for private corporations selling closed source software to the NSA).

The general picture seems to be what antics says in the first comment: NSA adapted Big Data technologies to suit their own access control and other requirements, and then decided that the best way forward was collaborative. A group of employees set up sqrrl to provide a commercial distribution. But it's an ecosystem that the NSA gains from, all the same, and the broad membership of Apache seems like it makes for a place where people may have leverage.

mpyne - thanks for clarifying: I see it now. I've never been a fan of "slippery slope" arguments because once you start on them, you never know where they finish.

I know why FSF takes the line it does, I'm just saying it is a line that has taken us to a strange place where open source advocates are simultaneously supplying the NSA with services to carry out surveillance, defending the practice, but complaining about the surveillance.

And as for "Accumulo is a tool". That's kind of a "guns don't kill people" argument. Would you apply the same argument to private companies supplying authoritarian regimes with deep packet inspection software? I see little difference in the cases.

As the poster of the linked article, I'd like to respond.

antics' "First of all" paragraph is completely consistent with what I wrote. The "Second" paragraph is an "If I don't do it someone else will" argument: it's not acceptable for arms companies and I don't see why it's more acceptable for open source foundations.

cartershonwald's first paragraph is also consistent with what I wrote. I am sure that the NSA takes more concern over privacy than, say, Google or Yahoo. But that's not really relevant here is it? And the fact that the technology is also useful for other things - well, we can say the same for internet filtering technologies and deep packet inspection, but we still criticize Blue Coat and others when the sell that to authoritarian regimes. I believe what I'm saying is consistent with criticising those companies.

_delirium's comment is also "If not Apache, someone else will do it" as above. Not good enough for arms manufacturers, and not good enough for the Apache Foundation.

I don't understand showerst's comment.

Pherdnut - I don't think the main argument with NSA is that they are being secret, it's that they are engaging in massive and illegitimate surveillance.