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Those are very wise questions! Perhaps they are ones that I expect the DoD has considered? As far as I know Signal is open source and no commercial arrangement
by Kalium 7y ago
Those are very wise questions!
Perhaps they are ones that I expect the DoD has considered? As far as I know Signal is open source and no commercial arrangement is required to make use of it, putting the DoD in a position to respond in a technical capacity should there be a conflict.
In legal terms, I believe the DoD could stop any acquisition on national security groups. The US government, like many national governments, reserves that power. Signal is developed and run by a 501c3, making this a somewhat unlikely series of events.
Again, those are great points. I'm just not sure they wind up being any risks the DoD can't readily control.
- thinkloop 7y agoGiven that it is open source, it seems odd that they wouldn't run it on their own servers.
- brisance 7y agoJust because I know how a car works mechanically doesn't mean I'm inclined to build a fleet of my own.
- jml78 7y agoThe DoD absolutely has the technical ability to run their own shit.
- backupcavalry 7y agoYes, but he's suggesting that DoD might not care to, which I can believe. Whether that's out of laziness or time constraints is another question.
- GcVmvNhBsU 7y agoThe trend for the last couple of decades (since Reagan?) is: if it’s not used to kill people, contract it out. Systems that used to be run by DoD personnel are now ran by Oracle/Microsoft in the cloud and Northrop/Raytheon and various small companies for on-premise.
- jml78 7y agoSorta but sorta not. Lots of things are contracted out but still run in DoD data centers with government oversight. Me = Former DoD software engineer of 12 years. But even so, there are a shit ton of DoD software people.
- bradknowles 7y agoThere’s an entire Agency of them. It’s called the Defense Information Systems Agency. And they’re not even the biggest in that space. I worked there for about five years.
- brisance 7y agoEven the "killing people" part is also contracted out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_military_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_military_company