December 21, 2010

Bradley and Karen welcome special co-presenter and guest, Aaron Williamson, to discuss the OpenBSD email regarding purported FBI backdoors. In the main segment, they discuss the amicus brief filed by SFLC (where Aaron and Karen work) in the Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB USA Supreme Court case.

Running time: 00:54:59.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Aaron brought up a message forwarded to the OpenBSD developers list by Theo de Raadt. This story has been covered widely online. (02:50)
• Aaron mentioned that Glyn Moody wrote a blog post about what issues about “Open Source” security this raises. (04:06)
• Bradley mentioned the gnuftp/Savannah site crack that occurred in 2003 and its security implications. Those seeking more information on this can read the slashdot coverage, Savannah forum posts, the CERT advisory and even the missing files still on the GNU FTP site. (05:21)
• Bradley again mentioned Thompson's hack which he loves to mention when security issues come up (06:26).
• Karen mentioned SFLC's medical devices paper, Killed by Code: Software Transparency in Implantable Medical Devices, which she loves to mention. (08:23)
• Bradley mentioned the Debian/Ubuntu OpenSSL bug that occurred in mid-2008, which was widely discussed online. (10:18)
• Bradley mentioned a case in 2000 where the FBI was able to open a mobster's PGP mail merely by getting his passphrase. (12:49)
• Bradley offers an even-money bet that there are no FBI-inserted bugs in OpenBSD. (13:46)

Segment 1 (14:18)

• The canonical page on Wikipedia for what Karen and Bradley are on FaiF says they are presenters, rather than hosts. (15:06)
• Aaron and Karen's organization, the Software Freedom Law Center, announced that they filed an amicus brief in the Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB case. (16:30)
• Despite the beliefs of a Jeopardy! contestant last month, “Maria” is Sonia Sotomayor's middle name. Antonin Scalia's middle name is “Gregory” (17:20)
• Bradley again reviewed the issues of classical vs. church pronunciations. (19:20)Bradley asked Aaron if what was being sold in this case was equivalent to the Cornballer as introduced on the television show, Arrested Development. (20:30)
• Bradley mentioned that on FaiF 0x02, they discussed the issue of how higher courts consider issues of law more than the detailed facts of the case. (23:30)
• RMS's speech, The Danger of Software Patents, is available as a transcript and audio (ogg) (35:22)
• Aaron mentioned Newegg's brief, which is a reseller. (40:50)
• Aaron mentioned the SCOTUS blog summary which included links to other amici briefs. (41:01)
• Bradley referenced Don's staff answer to their boss, Don, in the Kids in the Hall movie, Brain Candy. (45:57)

Final (54:16)

• Aaron, Karen and Bradley are discussing the alternative lyrics to the Stars and Stripes Forever (54:20)

These show notes are Copyright © 2010, Karen Sandler and Bradley M. Kuhn of Free as in Freedom, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC-By-SA-3.0 Unported).

Tags: bkuhn, karen, sflc, patents, aaronw

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