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U.S. Considers Microsoft Passport as National ID
An anonymous submitter writes: "Ladies and gents, the endtimes have begun. The Seattle Times is reporting that Mark Forman, associate director of information technology at the White House (or 'America's CIO', as he bills himself) has said the feds are considering the use of Microsoft's Passport technology to ID every citizen and every business seeking access to government services online. This is about as scary as it gets." To be fair, it looks very preliminary. Read the article. So many companies have tried to assist the government in providing services over the Net... but I guess if your lobbyists are good enough, you can be heard at the top.
Now I can't imagine being unable to reenter the country because the Passport servers were down again. Grrrreat.
What's your damage, Heather?
Does this mean when they sell our email addresses to spam companies the it becomes our constitutional right to receive spam?
Washington, D.C. (AP).- In a surprising turn of events, Americans have elected Bill Gates as President of the United States.
After a recount of all votes, Gates received 89 percent of all votes, leaving oponents Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks with 3 and 2 percent each.
"It's hardly a surprise", said Steve Ballmer, campaign manager for Gates, "Bill has showed great leadership skills and built the greatest company in American history".
Ballmer then made a turnaround in his position about the infamous "Mother's Day documents", and admitted "there might be some truth to them".
The documents were published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an underground group that has been described as the political arm of hackers and ciberterrorists, and wer purported to have been obtained from Microsoft's internal servers. Gates and Ballmer denounced them as a fabrication.
"I guess we can tell you the truth now", said Ballmer, after Gates' voctory was official, "there might be something there".
The documents include a series of emails in which Gates, Ballmer and Microsoft's VP of legal affairs, John Ashcroft, discuss several courses of action in they won the election. Among them were: Change the countrys name to Microsoft States of América, change Gates's title from President to Chief Architect of Everything, and outlaw the use of any software not certified as "secure" by Microsoft Corp.
Critics have pointed to the posibility of electoral fraud, but the governmente has refuted the posibility.
"It's ridiculous. Preposterous", said a spokesman from the Electronics Elections Office. "We used Windows CE doubleplussecure 2018 for the polls machines, and Microsoft XXP Security-Above-All Server for the counting. These are the most secure systems in the world, and they're incapable of errors".
After being questioned on the possibility of a bug in the system, the spokesman refused to answer, pointing out that the recently passed Corporations Antidefamation Act expresely prohibits the discussion of any possible flaws in software products, lest they be used for ciberterrorism purposes.
Thank you for taking your valuable time away from being wined, dined and brainwashed by lobbyists to read this letter. I strongly oppose the U.S. Federal Government setting precedent in support of a known and guilty monopolist. Please insist upon an Open Standard, arrived at by a broad spectrum of those with strong experience in the areas of Preservation of Individual Privacy and Integrity & Security of Data. Do not allow this perceived opportunity to lock the people of the United States of America into a closed standard which has proven non-secure in the past and the goals of the provider so transparent.
Regards, {Insert Your Name Here}
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Gee, that sounds like the perfect way to punish someone who abuses their Monopoly power - give them a big contract!
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w