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NEWS FROM THE LAB - Wednesday, November 6, 2013
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F-Secure Corporation's Answer to Bits of Freedom Posted by Mikko @ 21:09 GMT

We received a letter sent by Bits of Freedom and signed by 25 different parties, who were interested in our policy on the use of our software for the purpose of state surveillance. The same letter was sent to 15 other antivirus companies.

BoF

They had four questions in particular:

1. Have you ever detected the use of software by any government (or state actor) for the purpose of surveillance?

2. Have you ever been approached with a request by a government, requesting that the presence of specific software is not detected, or if detected, not notified to the user of your software? And if so, could you provide information on the legal basis of this request, the specific kind of software you were supposed to allow and the period of time which you
were supposed to allow this use?

3. Have you ever granted such a request? If so, could you provide the same information as in the point mentioned above and the considerations which led to the decision to comply with the request from the government?

4. Could you clarify how you would respond to such a request in the future?

(See here for the full letter.)

Here's our official answer, mailed back to Bits of Freedom on the 1st of November:

Letter to bof.nl

Reference: Policy on Detecting Government Spy Programs