[Techtalk] Fedora Core 3 and SELinux

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2004 at 03:27:28PM +0000, David Sumbler wrote:
> But I am not entirely happy about the idea of SELinux.  True, you can
> supposedly opt not to have it enabled, (and true it exists in FC2, but
> disabled by default.)
> 
> Even so, I am not happy with the idea that my system depends on
> something created by an arm of the American (or any) government.  This
> is perhaps irrational, in view of the fact that SELinux is issued
> under the GNU licence - and I never check the integrity of the code of
> anything else I use (not that I'm capable of doing that anyway!)  How
> do I know that every aspect of SELinux is disabled, and that Dubya and
> his men aren't doing something nasty with my machine?
> 
> I'd be interested in other people's thoughts on this.

It seems rather ironic to be concerned about backdoors in something
which is supposed to *increase* the security of Linux...

I don't actually think that the fact that the SELinux folks are employed
by the US government is a concern.  (I was about to make a comparison
with people employed by universities, but then I realized that I don't
know enough about the US university system as opposed to the Australian
one, to be able to make a meaningful comparison).

The SELinux folks have actually been around for a while, long before
Bush was in power.  Any reputation they have is independent of his
Presidentness, and I don't think they'd really change overnight because
of whoever happens to be President.  Just because the fellows in the
White House are fanatics doesn't mean that everyone in the US is.

The question isn't only whether you can trust the SELinux folks, but
whether you can trust the Fedora folks, isn't it?  Because it isn't as
if the Fedora folks would necessarily be happy about backdoors into
their Linux either, would they?

Kathryn Andersen
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