NSA access is built into Windows

[miriam_e]

http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/5263/1.html

Interesting article. There is even a link to a site that tells how to change the NSA key to protect yourself from being spied upon. Unfortunately the website has been taken down. Gee, I wonder why?

Some people will be tempted to think that it is OK for shadowy spy agencies to look into all that we do. After all, if you are law abiding then you have nothing to fear right? Such people have very short memories. Remember the McCarthy witch hunts against communists? How many innocent people's lives were ruined because they were fingered as communists? Nobody needed to prove anything -- just suspicion was enough for you to be shut out of society and for you to lose everything. Law abiding people have a lot to fear from spooks.

At the moment we have 2 witch hunts in progress: the mad scramble to find terrorists, and the frantic fear of pedophiles. You only need to have the vaguest suggestion of your name to be linked with either to be ruined. Justice and the law don't even begin to come into the picture.

................
Additional:
Oh, I forgot to mention that about 60 million* Americans (about a fifth of the population) are now criminals because of insane copyright laws imposed by the big corporations, so if you think you are safe... think again.

* The number is almost certainly much higher than 60 million. Have you ever taped a TV program, or a song off the radio, or taped a mix of songs from your CDs for playing in the car, or given a tape of songs to a friend or relative? Have you photostatted an article from a magazine or a chapter out of a book?

Comments

[guyminuslife.livejournal.com]

I recall reading about some server program that came out a few years ago that would make it virtually impossible for your website to be shut down, specifically by the government. Read there wasn't much of a market. Not sure what happened to it.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

When Microsoft et al's monstrous new baby "trusted computing" is finally here nothing will be immune from interference. ("Trusted computing" is really Orwellian double-speak for a computing platform that doesn't trust you and can not be trusted to deliver the truth.)

You will be able to publish anything you want on the net, but all the folks using "trusted computing" won't necessarily be able to see it. Those with control-fetishes will at last be able to drive a permanent wedge between you, the user and everybody else out there. What you get to read and see will be easily and totally controlled by those who hold the strings. And there will be no recourse -- it will be beyond the law.

If you think I'm being needlessly paranoid about this, look up on the net (while you still can) about "trusted computing". A very balanced, though quite long piece can be found at http://www.eff.org/Infra/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php

This kind of filtering of information is already being used to limit what we see. I am co-editor of a free, online magazine for science fiction http://spacedoutinc.org that seeks to redress the queer balance. For a medium that portrays itself as forward-thinking and innovative, science fiction (particularly on television) is notoriously conservative. We may commonly rub shoulders with aliens from other planets, but almost never meet gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered humans. And if such queers are met they must die or are generally the bad guys of the story. Recently one of Australia's major ISPs has blocked access for its subscribers to our website. We don't have porn and there is nothing corrupting there, and big-name authors who are not queer sometimes write for us. Our site has even won an award for achievement from the mainstream SF community. But an ISP has taken it upon themselves to censor us.

[guyminuslife.livejournal.com]

'Cause, you know, if it's gay and it's on the Internet, it must be porn. Grrrrr........

Pretty soon you'll be a "terrorist organization." If the NEA is, anyone can be.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

NEA?
National Education Association?
OECD Nuclear Energy Agency?
New Enterprise Associates, venture capitalists?
National Energy Action in UK?

[guyminuslife.livejournal.com]

National Education Association. As in, the teachers' union.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Found it.

Heheheheheh
Poor Mr Paige, he must have had a bad day.
I'm sure he changed many hearts and minds with that talk.
That's the way to get the teachers to vote for you: insult them. :)

[guyminuslife.livejournal.com]

The Bush administration's big weakness, I think, is that it doesn't mind pissing off big groups. Like firefighters. Interesting thing about federal budget cuts is that you cause people who work in the public sector--which probably, though I don't have verification on this, means that they're more politically active--getting pay cuts and layoffs. Which they don't like. Which makes them vote against you.

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

This reads like an advertisement for Open Source software. :)
Then-again I don't think this story (or the analysis of the purpose for the keys) is true. I'm not saying Microsoft aren't evil but there are easier and better ways to snoop on the contents of your Windows machine.
Take a look here, here and here.


BTW, It's not just your PC or the US government. I used to work with a guy who worked at Ericsson, where he dealt with the programming/system that intercepts and buffers data going through Melbourne's mobile phone network. It didn't matter if it was voice, data or SMS but they could keep track of hundreds of thousands of connections at a time and shuffle the data off to our local spy agencies. Lovely, innit?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Easy way to find out: look in that dll in what was it? NT Service Pack 4 for the string NSAKEY.

I don't doubt the story though. The Age published a story a while back where the French security organisation (forgotten their name) warned people that a number of high-level staff at Microsoft also work for the NSA. It would be no surprise. After all, it is the logical way to gain access to a wealth of information around the world.

And what of the extraordinary lack of security in MSWindows? Does anybody seriously believe that the most powerful software corporation on the planet is unable to make its product as secure as Linux? I have to conclude that the lack of security is no accident. For instance, the ability of MSWord to include other documents on your machine without you knowing it. It doesn't happen arbitrarily, but does this when directed to do so by another person you are sharing documents with.

But yes, I agree that it should make us even more interested in open source software.

real crypto

[(Anonymous)]

talk to any cryptofreak and they'll all (at least all who don't work for a government) say that the *only* crypto worth anything is open-source. if you cannot tell how it is done, you cannot verify it is robust nor if there are back-doors.

remember: there is *no such thing* as unbreakable crypto (novelists' fantasy only), there is just crypto which would take so long and so much resource-allocation to crack that the intelligence would not be useful any more.

jeffs