
An Open Letter to the Chiefs of EMC and RSA - koenrh
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002651.html
======
Goopplesoft
Knew his name was familiar. Mikko Hypponen has some great Ted talks as well:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_how_the_nsa_betrayed...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_how_the_nsa_betrayed_the_world_s_trust_time_to_act.html)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_three_types_of_onlin...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_three_types_of_online_attack.html)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_fighting_viruses_def...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_fighting_viruses_defending_the_net.html)

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
Another great one is "The History and Evolution of Computer Viruses" [1].

I actually have the viruses he demonstrates. You can download them here [2].
He emailed them to me once. Just load them into DosBox!

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yswPIwDFYDY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yswPIwDFYDY)

[2]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhqt3wh8hzuf8vn/dosboxViruses.zip](https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhqt3wh8hzuf8vn/dosboxViruses.zip)

------
wavefunction
I'm an american and I care about widespread surveillance of foreigners.

~~~
Goopplesoft
Yeah, that honestly almost felt like a challenge to his fellow presenters and
show caring by boycotting the conference as well.

EDIT, Also NSA is a intelligence agency: spying on foreigners seems to me like
it'd be their objective, regardless of the revelations... Lets not act
surprised about this now. Other foreign intelligence agencies do their share
of spying on foreigners too (again, their objective). Unless you're stressing
'widespread'.

~~~
coldtea
> _NSA is a intelligence agency: spying on foreigners seems to me like it 'd
> be their objective, regardless of the revelations..._

And the objective of the KKK was to spread fear on certain parts of the
population. That doesn't make it OK. Objectives, even obvious ones, can be
shitty too.

Also, spying on elect foreigners, doing targeted work to get intelligence data
on terrorism etc is one thing. Spying on almost everybody on the world, and
especially targetting politicians, allies, officials involved in trade deals,
etc, is not what it should be doing. The German chancellor is not bloody
Osama, and helping some major corporation get a stronghold in some country is
not about "national security".

~~~
a3n
> helping some major corporation get a stronghold in some country is not about
> "national security".

While I agree with your overall message, and even the part I quote, if you
think "holistically" then it is in the US interest to dominate trade
negotiations through intelligence. For example, it's better for US national
security if Brazil had bought a US fighter. It strengthens the financial
health of Boeing, makes it easier for the US to keep up a certain level of
capability (paid for by foreignors, win-win!), has money coming in to the US
for decades as a result of the maintenance contracts, and there's a non-zero
chance that the software for flying those planes have backdoors and loggers.

I'm not saying it's right, but the security forces and corporations are very
much motivated for this to happen, with ready made excuses of national
security to justify it.

------
suprgeek
Excellent principled stand by Mikko.

Minor problem ".... In fact, I'm not expecting other conference speakers to
cancel. Most of your speakers are american anyway – why would they care about
surveillance that’s not targeted at them but at non-americans."

Incorrect - NSA surveillance most definitely HAS targeted Americans in
America. That is precisely what the Snowden disclosures show - leaving aside
all the contortions of "Only Collecting data is not surveillance - Metadata is
not Surveillance, etc, etc"

~~~
jorde
I'm 100% Mikko knows this and he is just being sarcastic.

~~~
suprgeek
Hmm ...complete Sarcasm fail on my part then. Getting harder and harder to
tell.

~~~
azakai
Does not look like sarcasm to me either.

------
LionRoar
"In fact, I'm not expecting other conference speakers to cancel. Most of your
speakers are american anyway – why would they care about surveillance that’s
not targeted at them but at non-americans. Surveillance operations from the US
intelligence agencies are targeted at foreigners. However I’m a foreigner. And
I’m withdrawing my support from your event."

I realy like all the double layers he put into this :D Its a joy to read.

------
gruseom
Mass surveillance of foreigners vs. citizens is a red herring anyway, since
the national agencies can easily get around such restrictions by swapping
data, or by declaring data "foreign" when it travels over international
networks. And those are just the workarounds we've heard about.

------
atoningunifex
Thanks for taking a public stand against this. I like to muse about whether
the rot is so entrenched that anything can clean it out now, but principled
people taking a stand is a good thing.

------
salient
You should hold it at 30C3 instead (unless it's too late to sign-up now).

~~~
mikkohypponen
Can't make it to Berlin this year, sorry.

------
chris_wot
What, you think Tucci cares? lol!

