this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Privacy

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[–] [email protected] 271 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The story does not tell us how Linus Torvalds responded to the NSA, but I’m guessing he told them he wouldn’t be able to inject backdoors even if he wanted to, since the source code is open, and all changes to it are reviewed by many independent people.

Yeah I'm guessing the answer would be more colorful based on the historical data we have

[–] [email protected] 125 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 105 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There aren't enough swear-words in the English language, so now I'll have to call you perkeleen vittupää just to express my disgust and frustration with this crap.

Beautiful

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago

It's like our very own Gordon Ramsay

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago

Also experience shows that it's possible to backdoor software in very subtle ways that could go years without anyone spotting them. So if he had decided to he probably could have done it, despite Linux being open source.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

I would pay money to see daddy Linus flip off some big shot intelligence official

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Oh man would die to see his reply. It would probably start with something like

"The fact that I have to explain this to a person who works in a national security agency makes me really worried..."