McAfee Will Ignore FBI Spyware

Drew writes: "The Washington Post is reporting on the FBI's new spyware called 'Magic Lantern.' According to their article, 'At least one antivirus software company, McAfee Corp., contacted the FBI on Wednesday to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software and alert a criminal suspect.' It is ridiculous that the software companies that are supposed to help us protect computers purposefully leave in loopholes for the FBI to operate their spyware."

Comments

Um...what?

[waldoj]

What are you talking about? Anthrax has a documented existence of thousands of years -- presumably it has been around much longer -- having been a problem for the ancients right up until Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine in the 1870s. The microorganism was isolated by Dr. Robert Koch in 1876, who named it Bacillus anthracis after its accepted name of anthrax, from Middle English antrax carbuncle, from Latin anthrax, from Greek, coal, carbuncle. [1] It wasn't until WWI that the US started exploring the use of anthrax as a biological weapon. [2] All that we did was make it more portable. But to say that we developed something new and decided to call it anthrax? That's just silly.

-Waldo Jaquith

[1] http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=anthrax
[2] http://www.defencejournal.com/dec98/anthrax.htm