Irrespective of the details of the current revelations about US spying being provided by Edward Snowden in the Guardian, there is already a huge collateral benefit. On the one hand, the US government is falling over itself to deny some of the allegations by offering its own version of the story. That for the first time gives us official details about programmes that before we only knew through leaks and rumours, if at all. Moreover, the unseemly haste and constantly-shifting story from the US authorities is confirmation, if anyone still needed it, that what Snowden is revealing is important - you don't kick up such a fuss over nothing.
But perhaps even more crucially, other journalists have finally been shamed into asking some of the questions they ought to have asked years and even decades ago. This has resulted in a series of extremely interesting stories about NSA spying, many of which contain ancillary information that is just as important as the main story. Here's a great example that appeared over the weekend on the Bloomberg site.
Among other things, it is about Microsoft, and the extent to which it has been helping the NSA spy on the world. Of course, that's not a new fear. Back in 1999, it was asserted that backdoors had been built into Windows:
A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled. Full story...
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But perhaps even more crucially, other journalists have finally been shamed into asking some of the questions they ought to have asked years and even decades ago. This has resulted in a series of extremely interesting stories about NSA spying, many of which contain ancillary information that is just as important as the main story. Here's a great example that appeared over the weekend on the Bloomberg site.
Among other things, it is about Microsoft, and the extent to which it has been helping the NSA spy on the world. Of course, that's not a new fear. Back in 1999, it was asserted that backdoors had been built into Windows:
A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled. Full story...
Related posts:
- The NSA helped make Windows 7...
- Skype's secret Project Chess reportedly helped NSA access customers' data...
- NSA leaks hint Microsoft may have lied about Skype security...
- Microsoft details global police data requests...
- Skype makes chats and user data more available to police...
- Skype is spying on Chinese citizens...
- Does Google spy on you for the NSA?
- Yahoo, Google, Facebook and more face fight to salvage reputations...
- Google and Facebook DID allow NSA access to data and were in talks to set up...
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