2010-10-15 05:29:13 +00:00
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======================
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Statement on Backdoors
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======================
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October 5, 2010
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The New York Times has recently reported that the current U.S. administration
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is proposing a bill that would apparently, if passed, require communication
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systems to facilitate government wiretapping and access to encrypted data:
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2010-12-12 20:11:15 +00:00
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`<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html>`_ (login required; username/password pairs
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available at `bugmenot <http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com>`_).
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2010-10-15 05:29:13 +00:00
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2010-12-12 20:11:15 +00:00
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Commentary by the
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`Electronic Frontier Foundation <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/government-seeks>`_,
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`Peter Suderman / Reason <http://reason.com/blog/2010/09/27/obama-administration-frustrate>`_,
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`Julian Sanchez / Cato Institute <http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/designing-an-insecure-internet/>`_.
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2010-10-15 05:29:13 +00:00
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The core Tahoe developers promise never to change Tahoe-LAFS to facilitate
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government access to data stored or transmitted by it. Even if it were
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desirable to facilitate such access—which it is not—we believe it would not be
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technically feasible to do so without severely compromising Tahoe-LAFS'
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security against other attackers. There have been many examples in which
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backdoors intended for use by government have introduced vulnerabilities
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exploitable by other parties (a notable example being the Greek cellphone
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2010-12-12 20:11:15 +00:00
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eavesdropping scandal in 2004/5). RFCs `1984 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1984>`_
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and `2804 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2804>`_ elaborate on the security case
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against such backdoors.
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2010-10-15 05:29:13 +00:00
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Note that since Tahoe-LAFS is open-source software, forks by people other than
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the current core developers are possible. In that event, we would try to
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persuade any such forks to adopt a similar policy.
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The following Tahoe-LAFS developers agree with this statement:
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David-Sarah Hopwood
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Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
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Brian Warner
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Kevan Carstensen
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Frédéric Marti
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Jack Lloyd
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François Deppierraz
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Yu Xue
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Marc Tooley
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2010-10-15 05:32:42 +00:00
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Peter Secor
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Shawn Willden
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Terrell Russell
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