GCHQ to share threat intel – and declassify SECRET inventions

Re: Backdoors anyone?

Better or worse than closed source software from companies based in countries known to spy on us?

Re: They don't do this already?

> What does Uk.gov ever give back?

Reg:

All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?

Xerxes:

Brought peace!

(ok I'm fairly sure uk.gov has never given me a bath but you get the point...)

Re: Bullshit!

And here was me thinking this had the smell of public relations and marketing. - My mistake.

Don't get your hopes up that it'll be anything cool. They'll surely have some cool stuff, but they aren't going to share that with anybody. I've posted about 'black patents' before, the entire concept is flawed and counterproductive. It's an invisible gravy train that finances countless small and medium size boutique companies and has fuck all to do with secret technologies, it's a commercial slush fund generator.

The whole thing operates like 'national security' issues and the flimsiest of pretexts are used to lock the information away and grant access to preferred commercial partners. None of the things I worked on during my days at ORNL is available to the general public, but not because it's scary stuff. Because it provides a commercial advantage for US companies and the the companies of our 'special friends', if we decide to share it with them.

People tend to think that simply adding a 3-5x cost multiplier to government work is the only benefit from landing those contracts, but they're wrong. You get access to an enormous body of IP that has been squirreled away specifically for sweetening deals. The 'black patents' are also used to close off contract bidding to anyone not on your list of preferential vendors. Jim's Software House (or whatever) is never going to get the gravy contracts because the costs of vetting that company for security purposes are simply too high, better to give it to someone with a proven track record of keeping secrets secret.

Besides, it would look just terribly suspicious if Jim's went from writing network admin software in VB.NET to churning out massively complex, embedded network traffic management tools and data mining system based on a proprietary architecture they figured out over a few beers. Look at all the ruckus caused by Palantir getting that kind of special access. It's going to cost a fortune to pad enough Boeing contracts to acquire Palantir without anyone noticing the funds moving around.

Like so very much of any governments operations, the 'black patent' practice is nothing more than a way to scratch backs. It sucks, it's stupid and taxpayers end up paying for the same inventions over and over. It's shit. That's the best way to describe it, shit.

Re: "cyber" security

I'm afraid you've got it backwards. Jackasses in places of authority have been using that term for over two decades. The train bound for Not Stupid Government Vocabulary left long ago.