If there's a poster child for the challenges facing open source security, it may be Werner Koch, the German developer who wrote and for the last 18 years has toiled to maintain Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG), a pillar of the open source software ecosystem.
A funny thing is happening in the wake of the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2490179/security0/security0-the-snowden-leaks-a-timeline.html">Edward Snowden NSA revelations</a>, the infamous <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2601905/apple-icloud-take-reputation-hits-after-photo-scandal.html">iCloud hack of celebrity nude photos</a>, and the hit parade of customer data breaches at <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2490637/security0/target-finally-gets-its-first-ciso.html">Target</a>, <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2844491/home-depot-attackers-broke-in-using-a-vendors-stolen-credentials.html">Home Depot</a> and the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2845621/government/us-postal-service-suffers-breach-of-employee-customer-data.html">U.S. Postal Service</a>. If it's not the government looking at your data, it's bored, lonely teenagers from the Internet or credit card fraudsters.
A report Thursday by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board calling the NSA's bulk phone records collection program illegal and mostly useless puts the Obama Administration in an awkward spot.
The NSA is spending some $80 million in basic research on quantum computing, money that may ultimately help commercialize quantum computing for the private sector.
Any effort to rein in the National Security Agency after its widespread spy activities were revealed in leaked documents must focus on more than simply limiting what personal data can be collected.
The government's insistence, in its dispute with Lavabit, that cloud service providers hand over their encryption keys when asked, has refocused attention on the issue of key ownership and management in the cloud.
Edward Snowden's revelations about the U.S. government's data collection program could cause U.S. providers of cloud-based services to lose 10% to 20% of the foreign market to overseas rivals.
They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you're dead.
