Interview with Poul-Henning Kamp
NSA operation ORCHESTRA: Annual Status Report
Q: Could you briefly introduce yourself?
I’m a six foot ape-descendant who makes a living doing weird stuff with computers. I’ve been in computing for 30 years and open source for 29. I used to be one of the central developers in FreeBSD, these days I am the man behind the Varnish HTTP accelerator.
Q: What will your talk be about, exactly?
My talk is about the NSA - FOSS relationship.
I think we need to reevaluate it.
Q: What brought you to this topic, why do you care about it? Why is it so important for you to talk about it?
The inspiration is the disclosures by Edward Snowden, but while they have mainly been aimed at the general population and politicians, there is a different message for the IT world and in particular for the FOSS community, but most people seem to miss it.
Q: Could you shed some light on the main message you want to convey in your talk? If there’s one thing that people should remember after your talk, what should it be?
“Who do you trust, and why?”
Q: What do you hope to accomplish by giving this talk? What do you expect?
I hope that people will laugh and think.
Q: What’s the role of FOSS in this age of surveillance by the NSA and other shady agencies? Can we fight the current privacy crisis with FOSS?
Those are very good questions, and I hope my talk will inspire people to think about and investigate evidence to find the answers.
Q: Have you enjoyed previous FOSDEM editions?
No, I have never been to FOSDEM before.
Creative Commons License
This interview is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Belgium License.