[Ubuntu-eg] Stallman says cloud computing is a trap

Amr Ali amr.ali.cc at gmail.com
Mon Jun 10 12:15:58 UTC 2013



On 06/10/2013 01:52 PM, Hassan Ibraheem wrote:
> I think the discussion is getting a bit off-topic, but it's not
> necessarily a bad thing.
> 
> However, the fact that you can't be technically 100% secure shouldn't
> be a reason to overthrow Stallman's argument.
>

Stallman's argument has nothing to do with security. His argument is basically
distrust companies because they are evil. That's it in a nutshell, what he fails
to understand is that it is in fact in the interest of these "evil" companies to
have happy customers. He has proven many times that he's absolutely ignorant
about the subject and always argues from the standpoint of actual software that
runs on your machine, which is just preposterously ignorant. The world has moved
on way far and beyond the whole FOSS vs. proprietary wars. It's all now data and
computation as a utility, it comes with its own challenges and perks. In short
Stallman is simply living in the late 90's when the fight was hot and real.

That of course and encouraging people to replicate entire infrastructures just
to send emails and play games... yeah like we have nothing better to do than
setting up mail servers, the world doesn't revolve around
FOSS/FLOSS/OSS/or-just-software, technology is there to help people go about
their daily life in better more efficient ways.

> With Gmail, you're giving Google access to your emails to analyze and
> show advertisements based on them, and to provide to government if
> they decide. People are giving up their rights, security and privacy
> just for the sake of convenience and price.
> 

They provide access to government not on whimsical desires, they do because they
*MUST*. It's not at all nice for the private sector to deal with any government
anywhere, it's a gigantic headache.

The problem is in the government and people, not just governments btw.

> He is right about that, some people however don't mind it, although we
> should, generally we don't.
> 
> If you believe that you can never technically achieve security and
> privacy, you're probably right, but that shouldn't mean giving away
> everything.
> 

Giving away everything is idiotic, if someone uses HTTP to access his bank,
she's a simpleton. This has nothing to do with the government, in fact,
governments require banks to provide high-grade security for their customers. So
it's not like governments are all evil either. They are a necessary evil really
for those that don't understand or don't want to live in a civilized society.

> Personally, I have no problem with people taking either extremes, the
> true danger comes though when a full society becomes dependent on
> proprietary technology from a single vendor. That happened with
> Windows, and we're just barely recovering with the rise of Macs and
> mobile devices.
> 

This is the problem of the people and government, they are both guilty.
Governments that allow for monopolies and unregulated cartels are corrupt
governments (e.g., we have a very good example). It is also people's fault
because they are intellectually lazy enough to accept defactos on face-value.
Also in a truly free* market there will always be alternatives that will compete
over customers' happiness.

> Hassan Ibraheem
> Software Developer
> Cairo, Egypt
> Email: me at hsn.im Twitter: @hsnim
> Skype: hassan_ibraheem LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hsnim
> 
> 
> On 10 June 2013 13:42, Amr Ali <amr.ali.cc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is not popular, but TOR is not as secure as "people" like to proclaim.
>> Browser plugins can completely circumvent the intended security of communicating
>> over TOR by establishing direct connections, node-poisoning (i.e., introducing
>> several "Eve" nodes in the network) to mount traffic analysis and find
>> correlations at the exit and entry nodes to identify the origin of the
>> connection or the nature of the content.
>>
>> And in fact any distributed communication setup is vulnerable to these types of
>> attacks. The difference between using something like TOR and not using it is
>> basically raising the bar to face more skilled adversaries.
>>
>> The point is, you can surely try to make it harder, but it's futile if you
>> become a subject of interest to a well funded and well organized adversary.
>>
>> That of course and you'll have to suffer a high degradation of QoS due to the
>> security requirements of these types of distributed setups. There's a good
>> solution on the rise (i.e., Homomorphic Cryptography) that would store your data
>> in the cloud in encrypted form and you can run processes against it without
>> exposing the data to the service provider, but that still has some work to be
>> done to go mainstream.
>>
>> On 06/10/2013 01:26 PM, AMahdy AbdElAziz wrote:
>>> Correct me if I'm wrong but AFAK, Tor is hiding your traces from the Website not
>>> from the ISP. Your ISP is the final line sending you the "data" and knows
>>> exactly from where this data is coming.
>>>
>>> --
>>> AMahdy AbdElAziz
>>> http://www.AMahdy.net
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Mohammed Gamal <m.gamal005 at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:m.gamal005 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     @Amahdy:
>>>     You can still use something like Tor if you want to hide your traffic
>>>     from your ISP. The problem with cloud sites is that YOUR data resides
>>>     at THEIR servers, so you have absolutely no control over it, and this
>>>     is a valid risk (whether you're willing to take it is a different
>>>     story). Stallman might be overdoing it, but he has some valid
>>>     arguments.
>>>
>>>     That's why initiatives like decentralized social networks like
>>>     Freedombox and Diaspora are important to provide a future alternative
>>>     for centralized social networks and clouds like Google and Facebook.
>>>
>>>     I recommend you watch two talk by Eben Moglen, one titled 'Freedom in
>>>     the cloud' and 'Why Political Liberty Depends on Software Freedom More
>>>     Than Ever' keynote speech at FOSDEM 2011. Search for them in youtube,
>>>     they're very informative.
>>>
>>>     Regards,
>>>     Mohammed
>>>
>>>     On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 1:08 PM, AMahdy AbdElAziz <amahdy7 at gmail.com
>>>     <mailto:amahdy7 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>     > +1 for Amr Ali. I kept repeating this for ever, it's your choice to either
>>>     > stay outdated and ages behind technology just seeking a way for a fake
>>>     > "privacy" and "free software", or to just move on like everybody on planet
>>>     > earth is peacefully with his life. What's the big issue if someone in USA
>>>     > knows your current location right "now"? What if they just hired a physical
>>>     > person to track your current location, would you be able to stop him?
>>>     >
>>>     > Just place a big bold line between your internet life and your real life and
>>>     > that's it.
>>>     >
>>>     > GNU Linux is "free open source software" but you never know what the
>>>     > executable that you download pre-built contains. Will you download the
>>>     > source of everything and compile? then make sure to "read" the source code
>>>     > of everything too AND tell me how you gonna compile a compiler from source.
>>>     >
>>>     > Right now even if you open the internet from a direct connection with no
>>>     > proxies, how can you tell that whoever providing you internet (your ISP) is
>>>     > not tracking you? They easily CAN do it, and if it's not them then whoever
>>>     > provide your ISP internet CAN do it. Big hassle to worry about it and at the
>>>     > end of the day, do you really have something on internet to hide it? Please
>>>     > just hide it now and forever!
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>     > --
>>>     > AMahdy AbdElAziz
>>>     > http://www.AMahdy.net
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>     > On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Amr Ali <amr.ali.cc at gmail.com
>>>     <mailto:amr.ali.cc at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>     >>
>>>     >> The problem is not privacy, what is privacy? It's BS, doesn't exist. If
>>>     >> someone
>>>     >> wants privacy they should simply stop using the Internet, find a cave and
>>>     >> protect it against satellite thermal imaging, and stay there for good.
>>>     >> Also it
>>>     >> is not about interfaces, Stallman is simply being stupid and ignorant by
>>>     >> suggesting that having your own mail-server or replicating any of today's
>>>     >> infrastructure technologies will help you in any significant way;
>>>     >> absolutely
>>>     >> not! It's about Big Data and information dissemination.
>>>     >>
>>>     >> There are just a few reasons that most "people" really need privacy for
>>>     >> and they
>>>     >> are mostly unjustified and often ludicrous. There's no way you can assert
>>>     >> the
>>>     >> privacy of a piece of information once it goes outside your machine;
>>>     >> granted
>>>     >> there are methods to help you "feel" more secure, but truth of the matter
>>>     >> is,
>>>     >> security in itself is a "feeling", it is an illusion, it's confidence
>>>     >> built upon
>>>     >> the unlikelihood of a persistent adversary, and that's why we invented the
>>>     >> nomenclature of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) which is used to account
>>>     >> for
>>>     >> worst case scenario profiles of malware, individuals, and organizations.
>>>     >> Nothing
>>>     >> can be secure or private indefinitely, it is theoretically impossible due
>>>     >> to the
>>>     >> lack of an epistemological authoritative root that can assert the security
>>>     >> or
>>>     >> privacy of any piece of information (e.g., Certificate Authorities are
>>>     >> pseudo-roots because who can be authoritative about their security? No
>>>     >> one!)
>>>     >>
>>>     >> I've helped build services that you just won't believe how accurately it
>>>     >> can
>>>     >> pin-point your location and identify you out of millions of other users
>>>     >> based on
>>>     >> very small data facets it collects once you visit any site that uses the
>>>     >> service
>>>     >> (and you cannot do much about it btw unless you want to start using Lynx),
>>>     >> it
>>>     >> sits on-top of billions of fingerprints. It is simply preposterous to even
>>>     >> think
>>>     >> that you have significant control over anything that comes out of your
>>>     >> computer.
>>>     >>
>>>     >> </rant>
>>>     >>
>>>     >> National security under today's challenges (i.e., the fact that the
>>>     >> virtual can
>>>     >> and does affect the physical) forces governments to tap into the most
>>>     >> fertile
>>>     >> pool of intelligence.. I've gone on and on about this on my blog
>>>     >>
>>>     >>
>>>     (http://d4de.tumblr.com/post/52374664591/thoughts-on-big-data-and-information-dissemination).
>>>     >>
>>>     >> On 06/09/2013 10:13 PM, Eslam Mostafa wrote:
>>>     >> > Hey guys,
>>>     >> > while reading this article:
>>>     >> >
>>>     >> >
>>>     http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman
>>>     >> >
>>>     >> > i was offended by this "The concept of using web-based programs like
>>>     >> > Google's
>>>     >> > Gmail is "worse than stupidity", according to a leading advocate of free
>>>     >> > software." yeah felt stupid for a moment :D what does the guy use ?
>>>     >> >
>>>     >> > "this mail has been sent using GMAIL"
>>>     >> >
>>>     >> > --
>>>     >> > Eslam Mostafa,
>>>     >> > My Blog <http://cseslam.wordpress.com>
>>>     >> > My Website <http://eslammostafa.com>
>>>     >> > GNOME Memeber
>>>     >> > Python/js/GTK+ Developer
>>>     >> >
>>>     >> >
>>>     >> >
>>>     >> >
>>>     >> >
>>>     >>
>>>     >> --
>>>     >> Amr Ali
>>>     >>
>>>     >> --
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>>
>> --
>> Amr Ali
>>
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> 

-- 
Amr Ali




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