Wed 10 Jan 2007
According to a Washington Post report, Microsoft is now admitting their co-operation with the NSA.
Cherry says the NSA’s involvement can help counter the perception that Windows is not entirely secure and help create a perception that Microsoft has solved the security problems that have plagued it in the past. “Microsoft also wants to make the case that [the new Windows] more secure than its earlier versions,” he said.
Or it could lead to increased distrust around the world about the security of Microsoft products. After all, from the perspective of foreigners the job of the NSA is to spy on them — NSA collaboration in Microsoft closed-source software means potential for being tracked.
January 10th, 2007 at 3:27pm
The NSA are a fairly major contributor to the information security field, it’s part of their mandate. They’re responsible for the SELinux project, for example. It would be suspicious if they *weren’t* helping MS, it’s certainly part of their mandate.
Besides that, I’m positive they’ve had backdoors into windows through other channels anyway.
January 10th, 2007 at 3:59pm
shadownode: I was aware of their responsibility for SELinux, but for that codebase a foreign organization or any partisan can review the code looking for bugs (of the listening kind). Plus, Microsoft is a US company while Linux is an international project… since we are dealing with suspicion and distrust rather than facts, I think association with the NSA will hurt MS internationally more than it will help them.
January 10th, 2007 at 5:16pm
Even the Canadian government is using coins with RFID tags to track our movements, according to the CBC.
Everyone’s spying on everyone else. The NSA working with MSFT - no big shock. I’ve assumed they’ve been working together for years anyway.
January 10th, 2007 at 6:21pm
Will it? You’d have to be pretty stupid to use MS (or any other closed sourced) products to deal with matters of national security in the first place.
China doesn’t, afiak.