Free Software and Information Security[CYIM, Fall 2021]

Course Description

Lawrence Lessig said, code is law. Our lives are everywhere governed and dictated by laws that we are not allowed to study and understand because most codes are not open source. These "laws" sometimes even cast a large net of surveillance over almost everyone in today's society. Think of all the backdoors such as Management Engine (in Intel CPU's), DUAL EC DRBG (in MS Windows), and 62078 (in Apple iPhones).

That is why the oppressed Tibetan people choose to trust f-droid, and why Edward Snowden the whistle blower choose to trust debian, both of which are repositories of Free/Libre/Open Source Software. It is also why we use FLOSS exclusively in this course to protect your privacy and security.

Grading

  1. In the class, there will be easy assignments almost every week, for which you can ask classmates for verbal help. These account for roughly 45% of total grades.
  2. There are also 3 to 5 quizzes which together account for roughly 45% of total grades. The quizzes are in the form of blank-filling questions. (But in reality they are more like matching questions.)
  3. Class participation and attendence account for 10% of total grades.

Important Notes:

  1. Cheating behaviors in quizzes are strictly forbidden and will result in failing the class.
  2. If you cannot come to the class, you must ask for a personal day off before the class. This is most important especially for those classes when we have quizzes.

Other Notes:

  1. Please prepare a usb flash drive for installing linux.
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 		 媒體識讀
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11:10
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