Or does it?

A whistleblower came forth and stated in a private e-mail, which OpenBSD leader Theo de Raadt published to encourage auditing and removing of the offending code:

My NDA with the FBI has recently expired, and I wanted to make you aware of the fact that the FBI implemented a number of backdoors and side channel key leaking mechanisms into the OCF, for the express purpose of monitoring the site to site VPN encryption system implemented by EOUSA, the parent organization to the FBI. Jason Wright and several other developers were responsible for those backdoors, and you would be well advised to review any and all code commits by Wright as well as the other developers he worked with originating from NETSEC.

This is also probably the reason why you lost your DARPA funding, they more than likely caught wind of the fact that those backdoors were present and didn’t want to create any derivative products based upon the same.

This is also why several inside FBI folks have been recently advocating the use of OpenBSD for VPN and firewalling implementations in virtualized environments, for example Scott Lowe is a well respected author in virtualization circles who also happens top [sic] be on the FBI payroll

You can read the OpenBSD mailing list post here. A less technical, easier-to-understand article is available on Hacking Expose.

I apologize to every reader of my blog for saying that OpenBSD was free of corporate and government taint. I also applaud Theo de Raadt’s publication of this whistleblowing, and hope that it will not only clean up BSD variants, but finally wake up the open-source sheep that unconditionally support every product, decision, and action connected to the Linux kernel team, the Free Software Foundation, and Google and get some serious reform done.

I’d love to see a new open-source OS in which:

• Donations from active developers only – all external funding is refused.
• BSD or similar permissive licensing is used, so that one will be free of the moneyed Free Software Foundation’s management decisions regarding future license versions. Even if “or at your option, any later version published by the Free Software Foundation” is taken out of the default template, changes in treaty and law (the reason for the GPLv3) would render the project legally stuck and thus still subject to the FSF’s management.
• In order to join the official development team, developers must sign a contract, swearing under penalty of perjury that they are not acting in the interest or on the payrolls of multinational corporations, tax-deductible nonprofits, governments and/or espionage.
• To counteract other distributions and operating systems which exploit the permissive licensing to engage in digital rights management or secret backdoors, the developers would “authorize” uses of the code which are “pure” and “free of corrupt influence”. If needed, the 3-clause “New BSD License” rather than the 2-clause “Simplified BSD License” could be used to prevent fraudulent endorsements.

Until then, assume every operating system and every distribution has been tampered with by the moneyed and powerful.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won three critical exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions today, carving out new legal protections for consumers who modify their cell phones and artists who remix videos — people who, until now, could have been sued for their non-infringing or fair use activities.

The first of EFF’s three successful requests clarifies the legality of cell phone “jailbreaking” — software modifications that liberate iPhones and other handsets to run applications from sources other than those approved by the phone maker. More than a million iPhone owners are said to have “jailbroken” their handsets in order to change wireless providers or use applications obtained from sources other than Apple’s own iTunes “App Store,” and many more have expressed a desire to do so. But the threat of DMCA liability had previously endangered these customers and alternate applications stores.

On EFF’s request, the Librarian of Congress renewed a 2006 rule exempting cell phone unlocking so handsets can be used with other telecommunications carriers. Cell phone unlockers have been successfully sued under the DMCA, even though there is no copyright infringement involved in the unlocking.

EFF also won a groundbreaking new protection for video remix artists currently thriving on Internet sites like YouTube. The new rule holds that amateur creators do not violate the DMCA when they use short excerpts from DVDs in order to create new, noncommercial works for purposes of criticism or comment if they believe that circumvention is necessary to fulfill that purpose. Hollywood has historically taken the view that “ripping” DVDs is always a violation of the DMCA, no matter the purpose.

(note: this still does not give us back our VHS-era right to back up movies)
More information from Crooks & Liars

Three additional rights were also restored: the right to break copy protection when needed to test videogames for security flaws, old or obsolete “software dongles”, and (if no commercial solution exists) to make e-book readers more accessible to the disabled.

Stats the MAFIAA doesn’t want you to know about:

• 1. Child abduction: the fine is only like $25000.
• 2. Stealing the actual CD: the fine is $2,500
• 3. Rob your neighbor: the fine is $375,000
• 4. Burn a house down: The fine is just over $375,000
• 5. Stalk someone: The fine is $175,000
• 6. Start a dogfighting ring: the fine is $50,000
• 7. Murder someone: The maximum penalty is only $25,000 and 15 years in jail, and depending on your yearly salary, would probably be far slighter a penalty that $2 million.

The full article is here.