Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - Politically Minded F/OSS Advocates!

Alright, so, you like open source software, AND you're politically minded. Maybe you can help me ;)

I'm working on making a case for a showing of a documentary called "Unconstitutional" which is about the PATRIOT Act, sponsored by my school's LUG. The catch is that, since it would be sponsored by the LUG, I need to show how the PATRIOT Act ties in to concerns of the free/open source movement. Ideally, enough to have a discussion of these implications after the showing of the documentary.

I prepared a little bit of my vision for an e-mail to the LUG mailing list detailing my concerns regarding the PATRIOT Act and open source, but I'm hoping that others can help me go into more detail and provide other concerns as well.

This is what I have so far:

Quote:

The most obvious implication to me regarding the PATRIOT Act and F/OSS is one that particularly stands out were the PATRIOT Act to be made permanent. That is, the increased powers of surveillance and increased reliance on security through obscurity. Personally, I look at what the government attempted to do to Phil Zimmerman regarding PGP - BEFORE the PATRIOT Act - and I think it's clear that with the increased powers of the PATRIOT Act, the government can and will be able to label pretty much anything that does not bow to their interest as a tool for terrorism. Furthermore, with the incerased ability for surveillance given to the government by the PATRIOT Act, I don't think it will be long - especially if it were to be made permanent - before they require all software makers to include back doors for the government - of course, only to be used "responsibly" when the government deems it "necessary." When such back doors are required in certain types of software - such as OS's - that software will no longer be able to be open source of course. And, before long, it will be illegal - in the name of national scurity - for anyone to use certain types of software that don't have these back doors. Enter the banning of certain types of open source software, including Linux.

I look forward to hearing some more thoughts on this, and hopefully some that will help me point out some of the other implications of the PATRIOT Act on open source software.