Government spooks helped Microsoft build Vista

[James Knott]

John Macdonald wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 03:55:52PM -0500, James Knott wrote:
>   
>> Rick Tomaschuk wrote:
>>     
>>> Looks like corruption is rife in the US with the NSA allegedly
>>> supporting Microsoft. Looks like soon it will be anti-American to not
>>> support Microsoft. (Bush-if you're not for us your against us) Now
>>> Novell is in with Microsoft. I don't know why I bother to continue to
>>> support Novell. http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36814
>>>
>>> Does anyone have suggestions for long term IT strategies that won't land
>>> me on a terrorist list? Is RedHat really the only large non-Microsoft
>>> shop?
>>> RickT
>>>
>>>  
>>>       
>> Please bear in mind that it is the responsibility of the NSA to ensure 
>> software is secure for certain government uses.  Any software that's to 
>> be used has to be certified. 
>> The list includes Unix, Windows, Netware and many others.  Getting the 
>> NSA to say your software is secure, is not selling out.  The NSA 
>> produced a secure version of Red Hat a few years ago.
>>     
>
> It is also their responsibility to ensure that the U.S. is
> capable of getting intelligence from foreign lands.  As Bruce
> Schneier points out in his blog (Jan 9 about 10 entries
> ago right now http://www.schneier.com/blog/), these two
> responsibilities are opposed when they are examining popular
> software.  Do they report problems so they can be fixed so
> that U.S. government use is safer, or do they leave them in
> so they can be used to spy on the rest of the world?
>
>   

Given that Linux is open source, it'd be hard for them to hide something
in it.

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