Mozilla Is Considering Revoking TeliaSonera Trust For Sales To Dictators 123
ndogg writes "Mozilla is considering pulling TeliaSonera from its list of root certificate SSL providers. They have asked for comments on this on their mailing list. They're concerned about the use of the certificates by those governments for spying on its citizens, particularly in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan — where TeliaSonera operates subsidiaries or is heavily invested. Mozilla's concern is that TeliaSonera has possibly issued certificates that allow hardline government servers to masquerade as legitimate websites — so-called man-in-the-middle attacks — and decrypt web traffic. This alleged activity would contradict Mozilla's policy against 'knowingly issuing certificates without the knowledge of the entities whose information is referenced in the certificates.'"
Decentralised is the way to go. (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of trusting any of these companies (they'll sell to the US government as well, I'm sure), why not switch to Convergence [wikipedia.org]? It reduces the need to trust companies like this.
Mozilla (and Google, and other browser makers) should include it by default in all their products (even if turned off) to make it easier for people to switch away from centralised systems. Viva le revolucion.
There are many others. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla still includes all kinds of questionable cert authorities. Once I learned that, I had to go through my default Firefox installs and remove all the ones by Chinese government arms and similar.
Why single out these countries? I will never need a cert signed by a foreign government - ANY foreign government. There are probably only about 5% of authorities I actually might trust included in Firefox. The rest are illegitimate for 99% of users.
Re:There are many others. (Score:5, Insightful)
I will never need a cert signed by a foreign government - ANY foreign government.
I'm having a hard time with trusting domestic governments as well.
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Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of certificates and SSL is to protect communications between the browser and the web server. It's not "to protect communications from everyone except the government". It's to protect it from EVERYONE - including (and sometimes especially) the government.
Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score:2, Insightful)
"As nasty and corrupt as..." ... China under Mao? Venezuela under Chavez? Cuba under Castro? The USSR under Lenin and Stalin? Cambodia under Pol Pot? The NPRK under the various Kims? Zimbabwe under Mugabe? Zaire/the Congo under Mobutu?
Care to revise your bullshit story?
For all of America's, the American government's, and its leaders' flaws - and of course they are many (and one wonders how your life would stand up upon the withering criticism and examination that the life of a President, for example, gets) - I believe very few of our leaders have ever had a genuine desire to harm people nor have they harbored a profound megalomania. Ego - of course; megalomania - no. Sure, go ahead and despise a President because of their ideological orientation that you disagree with but the notion of the Chomskyites, this strange Kool-Aid they like to guzzle, being fed doses of pablum about "American Imperialism" and the "Military-Industrial Complex" and railing endlessly about the "Evils of Capitalism" yet enjoying its countless benefits (you know, like jobs, homes, clothes, electronics, computers, global air travel, and this weird little thing called the Internet), never proffering a meaningful let alone viable alternative, I am convinced is one of the luxuries provided by the American model of capitalism and Constitutional governance. Trust me if you were to write what you wrote about Mugabe your flesh-burned and -torn body (they wouldn't spend a bullet on you, lest they lose out on a good opportunity to torture you first) would soon be found on the roadside somewhere.
And, if you despise America, think it hopelessly corrupt and nasty "as the rest" then why not leave it for greener pastures? Maybe some other country has it figured out better than we do? According to Michael Moore, Cuba has the best medical care in the world. Just ask Hugo Chavez.
Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange. Almost everyone who has issues with the corruption found in American politics is labeled as a "communist".
And, if my wealth, relative to that of the rest of the world, depends on a subservient Latin America - well, I don't need or want it.
Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score:5, Insightful)
First, this is coming from a die hard libertarian.
You do realize that the idea of taxes is to pay for things that everyone uses, but would be infeasible to be run by private entities. This so called extortion you speak of is basically making you pay for that which you use. i.e. not stealing it. Any sane individual has no problem with paying taxes for public services, the disagreement comes into what should be a public service and what should not.
And you're statement on fraud confirms you do not know what fraud is. I may not know everything the government does with the money I give them, but I do know that it's not swindled from me, and I do know what a lot of it goes towards. Fraud would be being told you're paying for one thing, then either not getting it at all, or getting something very different, and worth much less.
And everything is pro-freedom except when it's not. I expect to be free to do what I want, except when it violates the freedoms of other people. I don't expect to have the freedom to get in my car drunk off my ass and drive down the road. That endangers the freedom of other people to exist.
Seriously, are you trolling or just stupid?
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Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score:5, Insightful)
Haha. Ok, what about Verisign/etc? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, they've been issuing intermediate CA certs to various 'friendly' governments and agencies, to support MITM (for 'lawful interceptions' only, of course).
Will Mozilla remove them too, since they seem to be breaching that same policy?
Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score:2, Insightful)
Smedley Butler was, if not an outright Communist, at least a fellow traveller. His views on American's wars of the era are therefore tainted by the particular ideology that gripped him at that time, and he was not a dispassionate commentator.
Hahaha. Are you actually using this as an argument?
Wow.
dangerous territory (Score:5, Insightful)
US, Canadian and European governments also spy on their citizens. So Mozilla now needs to determine whose spying is good and whose spying is bad. I'm not sure that's a business that Mozilla should be in.
Perhaps a better solution would be to make it easier and more user friendly for people to detect questionable certificates and choose which certificates you trust. But, of course, that would upset Western governments...
Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score:2, Insightful)
ok troll, i will bite it!
what, homeland security, FBI, NSA are angels?
The countless US invasions, the protection of dictators like Noriega, Pinochet and even Saddam just because (at their opinion its the less of two evils), the support of Islamic groups like the Taliban, etc, etc. Even today, with the CIA torture jails, Halliburton corruption, wall street and banks frauds show that you have nastiness and corruption all over the top US government and companies.
Probably the US is directly and indirectly responsible of more killings and problems than most of those countries.
People all over the world have the same "Capitalism benefits" as you, even if they are communists, fascists, tribal, etc!! things like jobs (duh!) , homes (double duh!) , clothes ( triple duh!) , electronics (all made in china today... that is communist!!) , computers (even URSS had their own computers!), air travel(duh!) and yes, even internet (call it arpanet, fidonet [wikipedia.org], AMPRNet [wikipedia.org] or minitel [wikipedia.org], what ever... arpanet won, but there where alternatives out there)
And yes, cuba have the BEST medical care in the world... and that limited high-tech medical machinery. In cuba everyone have full and free medical support, people around the world travel to cuba to use their medical cares for hard to solve problems (not free for non-residents of course). That doesnt mean that they can cure everything, that mean they give you the best treatment for your problem and long term support for it. No bullshit like, "Take this treatment, the other one a lot better, but is too expensive"... Everyone gets best treatment, not just the rich people.
Huge amount of money will also not give you better medical treatment, just ask Ted Kennedy [wikipedia.org].
who is full of bullshit now?
stop looking to your own belly and thinking that you are the center of the world. US have good things, but it also have many bad things, just like every place in the world!