> > I ran across the Wikileaks link describing modern "wiretapping" methods. > > https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/index.html > > Maybe I read it all wrong, and I only read this page, but it looks like > Linux is the tool used to hack into our digital communications grid. > Seen this. It is no surprise, as there is much more documentation (but also versatility) that comes with Linux. I'd the same if I were them. And with Wine they can probably mix-and-match for getting to penetrate other OSs. One comment on your title. I think the government is doing less "abuse" in the sense that you put it compared to what Wall Street does with Linux. > All it seems to imply to dumb old me is this once obscure geek toy OS > has come a long way to respectable status. > I should say something that starts with "unless you've been living under a rock you'd want know that" and ends with Linux has been mainstream for years. It runs our global infrastructure, and there was a youtube video of a TEDx talk on that (given by Linus' boss in Portland some years ago). > Given the accuse first ask questions later nature of our modern > political system, we Linux fans and the TCLUG list might already be > under suspicion. Franz Kafka and James Bond couldn't match the current > craziness. > Two things: (a) The "accuse first" is mostly a self-serving _economic_model_ in my humble opinion, far from an efficient way of doing things (in a sense that an economist would put it). It creates jobs to have a mess of things, and if Y2K was not a prime example of this, the book "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" puts it well for a different aspect of our world. The point is made here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_war (b) Wasn't it said that NSA has a 3-day live buffer of the internet traffic? Storing text, like emails, is really cheap in comparison. This crap we talk about here will live forevah!