{"id":3551,"date":"2014-01-17T23:51:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T23:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=3551"},"modified":"2014-01-17T23:51:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T23:51:22","slug":"did-andrea-linden-call-rod-humble-a-fascist-and-live-to-tell-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=3551","title":{"rendered":"Did Andrea Linden Call Rod Humble A Fascist And Live To Tell The Story?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Drax Files Radio Hour episode 2<\/a> is largely a wonderful tribute to Osprey Therian, I’ll review it properly over the weekend. However one or two other items caught my eye. There’s more news on former Linden Lab employee Judy L Tyrer’s Ever,Jane MMO<\/a>, set in the world of Jane Austen. The creators of this must be kicking themselves that #VictorianFacebook is all the rage this evening on Twitter, instead of #GeorgianFacebook, maybe they will save that for launch hey \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

#VictorianFacebook<\/a> *Prince Albert tagged you in a photo* Comment: VICTORIA ……”Not amused”<\/p>\n

\u2014 OldSparky (@EunoiaEuphoria) January 17, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However the really striking issue on this week’s Drax Files Radio hour is the claim that Andrea Linden called Rod Humble a fascist! The issue is tenuously linked to the NSA\/GCHQ spying scandal whereby it was reported that spies had been in Second Life<\/a>. The issue revolves around the off the record (OTR) messaging system that some third party viewers for Second Life have provided in the past and goes all the way back to 2011. The thing is, when The Guardian revealed the information around spying in Second Life<\/a>, there was discussion about this feature in the comments<\/a>. A user known as Ubermensch claimed:<\/p>\n

“Second Life has its own internal OTR instant messaging system with its own encryption keys that ( allegedly ) not even the makers of Second Life are able to hack into. The keys are generated locally on the user PCs and ‘agreed’ on by those in an IM.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

There’s then some healthy discussion about whether this is true or not and the traditonal surprise that Second Life is still around. However it’s the OTR system that is the centre of the story, allegedly from Andrea Linden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m not going to post the whole story, that’s what the link is for, but the story goes back to November 2011 when it is claimed:<\/p>\n

“In November of 2011, I a software engineer at Linden Lab working mostly on\u00a0the simulator proper in C++. At one of our (in-world) staff meetings, it\u00a0was mentioned that someone in management wanted to block user-to-user chat\u00a0using OTR, apparently a feature of some third-party viewers, on the\u00a0simulator side. The rationale given was an obvious sham – that it would\u00a0‘fragment the user experience’ and ‘be exclusionary’. This was in reference\u00a0to private conversations between users, not the chat broadcast to nearby\u00a0users in the region, so of course such a thing is already intrinsically\u00a0exclusionary.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

The story includes suggestions that a three letter agency, who were not the NSA, but maybe begin with a F, had put some pressure on the lab. There’s no confirmation that this was the case, but the story continues:<\/p>\n

“The only possible motive I could see was that it was really ‘exclusionary’ of\u00a0us or someone else monitoring the traffic observing the content of such\u00a0conversations, and I stated as much and that I would refuse to have anything\u00a0to do with implementing such an anti-feature. Anyway, eventually the matter\u00a0escalated to the CEO (Rod Humble) showing up personally in the meeting to push\u00a0the proposal in question, and me accusing him of being a fascist. I’m kinda\u00a0impressed I was still employed there after that, really. When it became clear\u00a0that the idea was universally unpopular with the engineering staff, management\u00a0seemed to back down and I never heard about it again after that.<\/em><\/p>\n

During that meeting, though, Rod said some things that made me strongly\u00a0suspect certain three-letter agencies were behind it. Now I wish I’d taken\u00a0notes at the time and could remember exact quotations, but the sentence\u00a0“Why on Earth would we want to stand up to the FBI?” sticks in my memory.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

Rod Humble, is, like me, an Aston Villa fan, so in the last few years we fall into the glutton for punishment category, but I think it’s going a bit far to call the man a fascist! However it should be pointed out that Aston Villa were once a force and won the European Cup in 1982 when they defeated a small team from Bavaria called Bayern Munich in the final.<\/p>\n

Now whether this story, attributed to Andrea Linden is true I do not known, but on a serious note, it does highlight the pressures companies can come under from security agencies during the course of their day to day work. The reality is that it’s easy for people on the outside to say companies should not comply, that they should stand up to the man, but those who have to make that decision are under a lot of pressure.<\/p>\n

Rod Humble is many things, some very good, some questionable, I like the man from what I know of him and think he’s done a great job in expanding Linden Lab’s empire, but others will of course have different opinions.<\/p>\n

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