1 ======================
7 The New York Times has `recently reported`_ that the current
8 U.S. administration is proposing a bill that would apparently, if passed,
9 require communication systems to facilitate government wiretapping and access
12 (login required; username/password pairs available at `bugmenot`_).
14 .. _recently reported: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html
15 .. _bugmenot: http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com
17 Commentary by the `Electronic Frontier Foundation`_, `Peter Suderman /
18 Reason`_, `Julian Sanchez / Cato Institute`_.
20 .. _Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/government-seeks
21 .. _Peter Suderman / Reason: http://reason.com/blog/2010/09/27/obama-administration-frustrate
22 .. _Julian Sanchez / Cato Institute: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/designing-an-insecure-internet/
24 The core Tahoe developers promise never to change Tahoe-LAFS to facilitate
25 government access to data stored or transmitted by it. Even if it were
26 desirable to facilitate such access—which it is not—we believe it would not
27 be technically feasible to do so without severely compromising Tahoe-LAFS'
28 security against other attackers. There have been many examples in which
29 backdoors intended for use by government have introduced vulnerabilities
30 exploitable by other parties (a notable example being the Greek cellphone
31 eavesdropping scandal in 2004/5). RFCs `1984`_ and `2804`_ elaborate on the
32 security case against such backdoors.
34 .. _1984: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1984
35 .. _2804: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2804
37 Note that since Tahoe-LAFS is open-source software, forks by people other
38 than the current core developers are possible. In that event, we would try to
39 persuade any such forks to adopt a similar policy.
41 The following Tahoe-LAFS developers agree with this statement: