[Foundation-l] CIA/NSA development of mediawiki

[Platonides]

Brian wrote:
> That means I can clarify why my much hated factual correction was
> appropriate. Here was the original statement:
> 
>> If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure
> 
> Let's briefly suppose that there are binaries for mediawiki (which is false
> - but suppose they only gave you byte code for mediawiki) and that the CIA
> had "improved" mediawiki and given you one. There is a crucial difference
> between the CIA giving you that binary and giving you source code - you can
> see the diffs in the source code and you can see the diffs in the binaries,
> but you cannot understand the diffs in the binaries.
> 
> How the poster I replied to does not consider this distinction relevant is
> beyond me.

I answered you privately on your reply to not feed the thread, but as
you're continusly repeating it, I'm going to clarify it here.

The ability to provide a mediawiki binary wasn't relevant to the point.
And yes, it can be done (Zend Guard, giving a PHP extension...).

My reply to Nikola was: You're right [in not trust it] if they handed
you a "improved" binary, but they would provide *the source diff*, so
there's no need to start being paranoic about the CIA "altering
MediaWiki in a fashion that will make it easier to spy its users"