granting access to user data?

Rowland Smith rowland at webperformanceinc.com
Wed Oct 17 09:56:17 EDT 2001


Beth Ellison wrote:

>> > "Among the arguments in favor of Linux: reports that some versions of
>> > Windows contain backdoors designed to grant the U.S. National Security
>> > Agency access to users' data."
>> >
>> > Does anyone know anything more about this? That's some spooky shit.
>>
>> I've heard this one floating around since the NT 4.0 days. There was some
>> incident, that I don't remember well at all now, about a year before 
>> W2K hit
>> the streets that started this off. A good deal of speculation mixed with
>> just enough fact to get everyone excited.
>>
>> Of course, the real interesting part is that anyone who hears this 
>> actually
>> *thinks* that it's possibly true. That speaks volumes about how much the
>> general technical community trusts MS.
> 
> 
> Ah. It's not new, just new to me. Got it. And your last sentence sums 
> things up beautifully.


It's funny how someone always wants to make the old "new" again. 
Remember the good ol' Clipper chip and Key Escrow?  That's just 
Clinton/Gore era terminology for "backdoor", which is just a shorter way 
of saying "please lower your trowsers, thank you very much".

Some of our members of congress are already trying to figure out how to 
repackage the backdoor/key-escrow clusterf*&k and get it passed as law:

Excerpt from Cryptogram from Bruce Schnier re Sept 11th:

"In the wake of the devastating attacks on New York's World Trade Center 
and the Pentagon, Senator Judd Gregg and other high-ranking government 
officials quickly seized on the opportunity to resurrect limits on 
strong encryption and key escrow systems that ensure government access 
to encrypted messages."

Here's a link to the Cryptogram that's quoted above.

    http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0109a.html




> 
> Beth
> 
> 
> 
>>
>> -- 
>>  Scott
>>
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-- 
Talk to ya,
Rowland

"The whole problem with the world is
that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, and wiser people
so full of doubts."

-- Bertrand Russell,
    quoted in the book
    A Word a Day




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