GUADEC: Danny O’Brien on privacy, encryption, and the desktop

“The problems that many in the online and free software worlds
have been concerned about for years are finally becoming mainstream
he said. “Powerful forces are trying to stop the spread of
information online”, and that message is finally starting to get
out. He put up the recent xkcd comic (“It’s the world’s tiniest
open-source violin”) as an example of one place where those
concerns are starting to get some mainstream attention.

“He pointed to a number of different attacks against the
computers of journalists, generally from governments, but sometimes
also from organized crime syndicates. It’s not just repressive
regimes that target journalists, he said, noting reports on the CPJ
website regarding Japanese journalists who have been subjected to
governmental pressure and mistreatment.

“One of the more insidious attacks against journalists’
computers was an email sent to foreign journalists based in
Shanghai and Beijing from a fictional editor for The Straits Times.
The email was a credible request for assistance in contacting
people on a list contained in a PDF attachment—a PDF with a
zero-day exploit that installed spyware on the computer.”

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