National Security letters for open source code ?
Or is it for just the private repositories ?
Or is it to be able to "subtly add code" to existing repositories without being seen ?
What would it be for ? I am stumped.
Or is it for just the private repositories ?
Or is it to be able to "subtly add code" to existing repositories without being seen ?
What would it be for ? I am stumped.
Would there be any legal requirement to satisfy such a request? Why should a business expend resources to do something the police could do on their own?
http://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-post-2009-annual-foia-r...
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/08/25/freedom-of-inf...
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/10/04/cheeky-lavabit-d...
Such as an XML(ish) markup with accompanying code to describe presentation?
I guess the only protection against this would be to either never press the merge button in github, or repeat the merge locally and check there is no diff against the remote merge.
Of course on big projects a lot of the code isn't touched in years but we're talking about revealing that somebody broke SHA1. It sounds very risky given the stakes.
The reasoning is always that you are actually signing the whole commit chain because your commit is liked to every previous one by the commit hashes.
I don't think it's this---I understand it to be basically impossible to mess with git repository histories without people noticing. I guess they might try to sneak it in as a new commit, but hopefully others on the project are inspecting things???
Process would be something like: -- Take the original chain. -- Identify a patch in the past where you want to insert the code -- Check out back to that patch -- Make the change -- Roll forward with all the following patches re-applied (with new hashes of course) -- Replace the repo with the new repo.
The end result is that hashes would change. So if you were talking to people about a particular patch using its hash, or telling people a particular release is set at a particular hash, you would notice when this changes. So it wouldn't be invisible using this method.
An alternative approach might be to generate a series of innocuous code changes that will produce the end result of restoring the hashes of the latest commit to what they should have been before the change. This might be extremely difficult or computationally intensive, unless the hash algo is weak.
But it seems theoretically possible, unless I'm missing something about how git works.
The scenario described happens frequently when people `git push -f` a rebased tree, and it certainly does not go unnoticed by other developers on the project — more “havoc” than “subtle”.
For example: account information, access logs, IP addresses, relating to the Tor project's managers, contributors, downloaders, etc etc.
That. Relax.
> Or is it to be able to "subtly add code" to existing repositories without being seen ?
Come on now, this is not productive to speculate on. This is "the CIA is controlling the population by putting chemicals in your water supply!" level stuff.
I'm not talking about moon or UFO's conspiracies. I'm talking about things that, according to leaks and official documents, they already did in the past and keep doing today.
This is something else. Basic rationality demands that we not treat something as truth until we have evidence of it.
The existence of bad actors does not mean an abandonment of critical thinking! Critical thinking in this case tells us that compromising a git repo is a horrible idea, mostly because even if you broke SHA and even if you managed to slip the code in undetected, the jig is up the moment somebody makes a conflicting change in that file, wonders what's going on, and then discovers that the server copy does not jibe with the local copy.
But we can't blindly defend governments, agencies or countries and attack someone just because their opinion or ideia doesn't fit on the "official version".
There is also a big deference between what I did (considering the ability to do something) and accuse them of doing something. You don't need evidence to think if they can or not do it.
Please cite an official document that shows the US government forcing GitHub to secretly modify the source code of a project in one of its repos.
As far as I'm aware, they've literally never done that, and to suggest they have means you have to show evidence that such a thing has taken place.
This is some Fox News level bullshit. "How do we know the FBI hasn't raped and murdered a girl in 1990? They've never come out and specifically stated they haven't!"
I'm not saying that the US (or other country) government did change some code on some repo on Github, what I'm saying is: if they want, they can do it legally or illegally. Do you understand my comment now?
When we make statements, we do so with context, and in this context, stating "the US government could do X" is implying that, yes, in fact the US government did do X.
Furthermore, saying "we don't know they didn't" is a specious argument, at best, because it suggests they did do X, when in reality they're no more likely to have done X, than I am to have done Y, which is some arbitrary other thing which is, while in the realm of possiblity, a complete waste of time to consider.
There exists, within the set of possible things, a set of things which are not among the greater set of things one must consider. The US government secretly forcing GitHub to modify source code in one of their repositories is one of those things that we can safely not consider, even though it is, you're right, technically and politically possible.
So while I completely relate to your feeling of trying to avoid conspiracy theory fantasies of "how do we know they haven't done that", I think it is probably not a good idea to say, "[this] is one of those things that we can safely not consider, even though it is... technically and politically possible".
Whether or not it has happened in the past, we probably don't want it to be possible and we probably should consider to consequences of what would happen if the government decided to take that action. 'Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,' and all that rot.
Hence the phrase "good germans" for people who believe anything the government tells them, without question, despite the history of government criminal activity, pretty much nonstop going back to the revolution. (Hell, imposing the constitution was done by a coup, there was no mechanism for replacing the prior government, so they just did it with fait accompli. That said, I wish we operated under that constitution, then there would be no need for these reports to reveal just how many people's (in bands of 250) constitutional rights are being violated.)