Slashdot Mirror
Gates and Security
An anonymous reader writes "Orwell was wrong about Big Brother! Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates told a homeland-security conference on Wednesday afternoon that Orwell's dystopian vision of the future, in which Big Brother used technology as a form of social control, 'didn't come true, and I don't believe it will.'" Other tidbits about this security conference: Gates had his own troubles with security (Drudge is copy-and-pasting from a subscriber-only Roll Call story). Gates is apparently trying to sell interoperability to HomeSec. Meanwhile, Microsoft viruses continue unchecked.
didn't come true, but Gates' mathods of assimilation are more insidious.
Bill's a serious threat to democracy now that he's finally old enough that politicians listen to his money.
Buy guns and prepare for the first Corporate War...
"This technology can make our country more secure and prevent the nightmare vision of George Orwell at the same time," Gates said. "Orwell didn't anticipate how technology can be used to protect privacy. The fact that technology can protect both security and privacy by protecting the computer systems and the information on them is a positive thing."
Dear Mr. Bullshit Artist Premiere:
Explain to me how the technology you are pushing for will protect my privacy? Your current pushes seem to be towards forwarding my information about EVERYTHING on my computer (including what hardware I am using when XP shuts itself off), stopping me from running what I want in my fucking house, on my fucking computer, and forcing me to "sign" draconian agreements to use software YOU force me to use.
So, not only is my privacy signed away, my freedom to use software *I* want to use is toast, and you get to dictate the OS of the future by allowing companies to see the "benefits" of developing for your shit.
Once your pushes for these "protection schemes" goes away I will again feel a bit safer running your systems.
Please refrain from future attempts at dictating to me what I can and can't do with software and hardware I purchased.
Thanks for listening,
The fact that I have to read the BBC to get some of the news that don't make the cut in US media isn't really worrysome? Or that most US radios won't play more than a dozen songs all day long? Or the fact that several laws and regulations are enacted without the public being aware of them? Cases in point: DMCA, UCITA, new FCC rules, etc.
Maybe there's no Big Brother, but I'm convinced there's a Big Brotherhood.
If anyone cares who doubts that we don't live in Orwellian times, listen to Democracy Now (www.democracynow.org), Wednesdays broadcast should surely convince you. You can get it at: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/2 5/1353213.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Microsoft is doing what corporations do-- They make money by whatever means they can. If that means setting up Orwelling controls for overzealous LEOs, then so be it. Is Microsoft doing that? Probably not intentionally, but they're putting the infrstructure in place to make it happen regardless.
Reading about Sobig.E this morning made me start to think about the positive effects of viruses and computer problems.
One of the most changing impacts is that anyone who spends any time around computers at all gains a healthy respect of what kind of effort is needed to keep your personal information on your computer and out of the hands of malicious crackers. I upset my mother deeply a few months ago when I demonstrated to her that her computer was infected by one of the CodeRed variants. It was most disturbing for her to have me read the contents of her 'My Documents' directory off to her over the phone. She immediately installed firewall software and the kind of virus scanning software I recommended.
It's becoming more and more likely for people to want to protect themselves and their computers from informational damage, wether it comes from malicious information vandals or belligerant, mammoth-like corporations.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Gates are all well and good but what if your developers have left you with secret backdoors?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Both 1984 and Animal Farm were an attempt to highlight the evils that Stalin & the Soviet Union were inflicting on its people in the name of "communism". While Orwell supported the concept of Communism, he was appalled at the way in which it was being bent and twisted into Stalinism, and in particular the historical revisionism of the Soviet revolution E.g. labelling Trotsky as an enemy of the people.
1984 was a scare story, essentially in an attempt to show people what had happened and what would continue to happen if Stalinism was allowed to continue in the name of Communism. As you say, he was pretty damn close to the truth.
That said, many people (Myself included) would say that what we see now from our own, non-Communist Governments approximates pretty closely to the totalitarian regimes of 20th century communist states, and uses a few tricks that are used by INGSOC & Big Brother throughout 1984.
He might not have been trying to predict the future, but it does sometimes seem that the future is trying its hardest to copy Orwells imagination..
Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates told a homeland-security conference on Wednesday afternoon that Orwell's dystopian vision of the future, in which Big Brother used technology as a form of social control, "didn't come true, and I don't believe it will."
Is it just me, or is the view when you're worth bookoo bagallions just a little bit different than from when you have to worry about finances more? Maybe it's just me, but it seems that Gates, being in the stratosphere as far as powerful men are concerned, doesn't have to concern himself with Orwellian government because he is above the fray.
"Class warfare" and yadda-yadda, but having that much money and influence simply has to affect how you view the world. This is a classic example of this in play. *I* worry about government intrusiveness and civil liberties because I am almost completely powerless - as an individual - to prevent it. Sure I got a couple of guns, but what good would that do against a government?
This is so true. When I read 1984, the privacy concerns paled in my mind in comparison with the government's control of information and by extension its absolute power over knowledge. Sure the 24-hour surveillance was scary, but what about not being able to trust the thoughts, beliefs and "facts" inside your own head? Sound like any Fox News shows you've seen recently?
* Please do not read my signature.
I would also add that someone like Bill would most likely be able to 'exclude' himself from such T.I.A. databases to some extent.
The status symbol of the future will be how *little* information can be found on you.
Sadly, every database is misused at some time or another. I don't expect that it will be much different with ones that contain the details of lives.
Can anyone here say that they would not be tempted to look through the T.I.A. database if they had a chance? You wont get caught, because good ol' boy Poindexter will build that in.
Keep up the good work, Motherfucking Shit. You are a credit to your post.
Blaming Bill Gates for Microsoft Worms is about the same as blaiming Henry Ford for drunk driving deaths.
Just replace "drunk driving" by "exploding gastanks" and your analogy will work fine.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
> "Orwell was an alarmist"
and
> Gates applauded increased information sharing
> between government agencies.
Regardless of the technology involved: if inter-agency information sharing continues unabated, then U.S. lovers of the democratic republic are screwed out of it officially. This is simple to see, and Gates is not stupid. Clearly, he loves the promise of federal $ more than he fears totalitarianism. That's probably went without saying before the sales pitch to HomeSec.
Bill Gates was never and never will be a geek. He's a good businessman (although ethically lost) and a huge dork, but he is not a geek.
Also, if Ford sold cars with a fully stocked bar in the glovebox you can bet they'd be sued for causing drunk driving. MS needed to focus on security 20 years ago, around the same time they were too busy using sleazy business tactics to shut out the competition.
So he is saying that technology is not used as a form of social control? Here in the US, our society (as it were) is controlled by corporations. OK, maybe not for the people living in shacks in Montana, but for everyone else, there isn't much of a society to speak of outside of what technology provides. Music, television, video games, etc. But I guess there are still the good old methods of control being used, like lies, FUD, misplaced patriotism, and threats of WMD.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
> Is it just me, or have 'Gates and Security' become another oxymoron term, like 'Microsoft Works'?
For Gates and other MS execs, "security" is just another marketing buzzword.
And that's exactly what they're selling.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
My mother was working on on such system for tracking survielance calls. You would see observations like "Sounds black" or "Probable Prostitute". The place was run by Ex-law enforcement types, and they really thought these sorts of things were appropriate to store in a database.
If I have learned anything running databases at my current job, and for a volunteer organization, its that bad data is like a disease. You get folks who don't understand what goes where, or what is appropriate to store, you find yourself doing a whole lot of cleaning up later.
On one form we ask volunteers for Emergency Medical information and Allergies. I had to explicitly instruct people to stop submitting hayfever or dairy products we only want to know what to tell the Paramedic if you are unconcious.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
from my recollections of Orwell it was never direct control but indirect conrol in incremental steps..
Did Gates actually read the book or cliff notes version?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Its their software not your software. If you do not like their terms do not use it. Better yet use Linux! Its FREE!
That said, many people (Myself included) would say that what we see now from our own, non-Communist Governments approximates pretty closely to the totalitarian regimes of 20th century communist states, and uses a few tricks that are used by INGSOC & Big Brother throughout 1984.
Specifically, those tricks are
I never said we were living in an Orwellian nightmare, or that Bush was Big Brother. Orwell was not trying to predict the future and Big Brother does not exist. We are still free to dislike the Government, we are still free to think what we like, we are still free to post comments such as this one, and for the most part we still live in a Democracy. Thats all good.
All I am trying to point out is that some parts of 1984 have made their ways into our lives, and we should be damn sure that we don't end up with even more of it.
However, I believe that it is a GROSS over-exaggeration to say that our non-Communist governments approximate the totalitarian regimes of the past.
If we do indeed lack some fundamental rights, it is due to our own laziness. We seem to demand so many things of our government. Yet, simultaneously, we are too damned lazy to get off our asses and work for those things that we want.
Those victimized by Statin and his ilk suffered under the yolk of oppression imposed by a militarisitic police state.
However, we suffer only under the yolk of our own ignorance, laziness, shallowness, etc. You get the idea.
For all you people who missed it (especially the moderator who marked it as "insightful" rather than "funny"), that was irony.
Calling the dictatorships in the middle east "international terrorists" is an attempt at thought control.
So is calling our actions there "liberation."
Thinking about it, you can easily see that the issue is not so cut and dried as "good guys" versus "axis of evil."
Recognize, analyze and decide for yourself, and such things will have no power over you. Otherwise, you may be violently for or against the things that you would do better to think about logically, as I believe that many of both the strong pacifists and strong agressors in this past war have been before even seeing the facts.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
You FEEL like it's a democracy because you've been TOLD it's a democracy.
You hear News from the press but really it's the 'what they want you to hear' kind of news.
How come the so-called PRESS is all over the news when it comes to Iraq and finding clues to WMD's when, right here in the US, There is no coverage of how BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS are being taken away by the misnamed PATRIOT Act ?
Or how come Americans never got to see Iraqi people being shot by American soldiers during the invasion when every body else in the world saw ?
Or how, I never saw on the CNN's from page Greenspan's initial objections to the Bush administration's plan on tax cuts for the rich ?
But really you shouldn't pay attention to any of that. Those car chases and that dog rescued by the firemen from some rooftop is more interesting. Nothing for you to see here.
"This technology can make our country more secure and prevent the nightmare vision of George Orwell at the same time," Gates said.
Blah blah yes it can but Orwell wasn't questioning the technology, he was writing about its use by the state. Technology's just a tool, any visionary realises that in primary school. The technology doesn't prevent a tendency away from trust, towards control of a populace, that's the job of people. Maybe if Billy was ranting on about how he was setting up technology focus groups to teach misuse of data, then he might have a point, but he's not.
To be fair, it's a difficult position. On one hand, all the little government agencies need to be responsible for something nationwide, and the general populace is way too lazy to bother abut protecting themselves, so something needs to get a handle on it. On the other hand... well, there'd be a good bit of ol-fashioned choir-preaching going on if I went on about state mis-use of data. Fortunately, being the largest home-user software house and one of the largest corporate influences fits Microsoft into both camps at once - hey, if it gets them money, then it must be good.
Yes, there's a hell of a long way to go in terms of getting users to respect their own privacy, and to respect the importances and influences of the gargantuan amount of data that is accessible these days.
However, what we really need for this is more education, not more technology. The latter is useless without the former. People will still be vulnerable if they don't understand what the system's doing, and the new wave of privacy technology isn't designed to do that. Just as the only secure machine is an off one, so the most private individual is a dead one.
Networking is ubiquitous, it affects us all, and as such we all take responsibility, not place it into the hands of a few people out to cash in on it. The sooner we realise that as a society, the better.
Not EVERYONE can just drop Windows.
Yes, everyone can.
It'd be costly, of course, but freedom is not "free of charge". It has to be earned.
Don't forget the banner slogans from 1984:
"War is Peace"
"Freedom is Slavery"
"Ignorance is Strength"
Orwell was frightningly accurate in his portrayal...
In other words: you don't know what you're talking about.
Read lots of different books, talk to lots of different people, come back in 10 years and let us know what you've found out.
Stop drawing this parallel.
The reason windows gets infected with virii is because windows users are complete and utter fucking morons.
I routinely get 100s of virii sent to my email box a day [the price I pay for posting my email address in usenet] and I've never been infected once despite the fact I used to use MSIE for everything for the longest time [I use Moz in WinXP now].
This connection that windows is inherently vulnerable is just pathetic. Idiot linux users running as root can do just as much damage.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
He's more of an arsehole than most give him credit for.
Look back through history and it's littered with good ideas put to nefarious uses. The problem is that no matter how well meaning technolgists are you are still left with the problem that cabinet level politicians are, generally speaking, not the most trustworthy and ethical persons on the planet.
For example, nuclear power. Possible clean and long lasting fuel source (if it was done properly), could improve everone's lot. First practical use - frying people and destroying whole cities and then threatening to destroy the planet from then on. Luckily the balance in power during the cold war means we are still here.
Example 2 - Gunpowder. use it to make pretty patterns in the sky, then adapt it to shoot lead balls through people and blow things up.
Give politicians the tools and they will always pour money into discovering the best way to use it to their own advantage whether it's for kicking the shit out of foreigners or keeping the populace in check at home.
The only trouble is that with computers and IT in general there's no mushroom cloud to let you know it's going on if they do it in secret Remember how long the governments involved denied Echelon's existence before finally owing up.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Huxley, however, painted a much scarier picture of a future society that is already coming partially true today. The best kind of servitude is that where the servant loves to serve the will of the master and knows no better, but a drone is a drone is a drone. In Huxley's world, all that the government and the powers that be have to do to retain control and shape things in the way they want is to use basic psychological principles such as someone responds better towards reward than punishment, placate them with their soma, touchie-feelies, etc, and they will want no more, or not think outside the system.
I highly suggest you check out Brave New World Revisited It is a collection of essays Huxley wrote on the topics of Brave New World, later in his life. I think you will be frightened and suprised.
Description from website:
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
Here's an idea. A Harvard student could sue Harvard for breach of privacy. How? Because it is widely known that Windows is insecure, whereas if they had used Macintosh, Linux, SunOS, Solaris, and others, they wouldn't have been vulnerable to virii on such a large scale. Using Windows was negligent, and hence they are responsible for the breach of privacy.
Just one lawsuit like this could kill Microsoft if it was successful. No business would run an OS that would open them up to liability!
Weee!
"This technology can make our country more secure and prevent the nightmare vision of George Orwell at the same time," Gates said.
Of course were all going to sit here and point out to ourselves it doesn't make sense. But remember he was speaking to CONGRESS. The same people who believe in lowering taxes and raising spending will lower the national debt. Listening to confirmed software monopolist talking about what they should do about their future software plans.
When he said he doesn't think it's come true and doesn't think it will, perhaps he means he'll never acheive the total control he's always dreamed of, what with Linux the constitution on such standing in the way.
You have to remember to take everything out of context.
With all of the products marketed as must-haves for proper security, nobody seems to remember that security and trust must co-exist for things to work.
Total security is rarely useful. Total security is locking the only keys to the safe inside the same safe. No robber will ever get in, the problem is, the people should have access can't get in either.
People get concerned whenever a backdoor is placed in a software package by a vendor, however, we all drive cars with security backdoors. If you lock your keys in the car, and you're locked out, you can call AAA. Their truck operators know how to unlock your door without the key from the outside, and they effectively break into your car for you to let you back at your keys. Of course, this back door is secured by the fact that you have to identify yourself as a paying AAA member before the driver is even dispatched, which leaves a nice clear paper trail that can be traced back if this service is ever abused by car thieves.
When assigning security settings on a company server, the idea of giving everybody the minimum security you need to is incorrect. The correct answer is to give them exactly the resources they need to get their job done. There are some things that should be sent up to a higher level for approval, things that a low-level employee just shouldn't be allowed to do. However, system designers have to be careful that the approval events are not time consuming and don't happen too often, otherwise the employee will spend more time seeking authorizations than doing their original job, and that often translates into a delay that customers feel as well.
The only way to have a 100% assurance that a system will never be hacked is to just not build it. Of course, that isn't too useful so that isn't usually an option. Once you give any user any access to the system, you're taking a risk. That even includes yourself, as you could either screw up or turn evil from the point of view of your employer someday. The more people you let in, the more risks you end up taking. You can't elimiante the risk, you can only put controls in to limit it.
In the end, the operators of a business have to decide how much risk tolerance they have with their investment. If they want no risk, they should pack their money up and put it in an FDIC-insured bank. No risk in that, but also very little reward. The company that trusts its employees, and finds that trust to be well-placed gets the highest rewards, but risks the penalties for the occasional mistaken trust mounting up.
It's all about the balance. Too little security is fatal, but too much security can kill a business as well...
Maybe I'll get modded down for being "offtopic" since I'm not making a joke about Bill Gates, but I was bothered by several things in the Crimson article.
First, they leave their administrative assistants' computers (which are used to access to confidential data) apparently unprotected from viruses or their definitions are not updated regularly. Auto-updates are trivial to set up. At the campus where I work, which is *much* larger than Harvard, the default campus-wide policy is updates *every* *hour* for windows boxes. I require all systems for which I am responsible to have current antivirus software with that update policy.
Then, when asked about the situation, their comp services person seemed to think they're doing a pretty good job. They leaked confidential data! This was a failure due to his department's negligence. They only "encourage" their staff to install antivirus software and post virus announcements on a web site. That seems very irresponsible to me. It is their responsiblity to protect sensitive systems. They failed to do so even though the resources to do so are readily available.
At the end of the article they have a quote from the Dean, a comp sci prof, saying that people should use Macs to avoid viruses. Holy shit, batman! Harvard is apparently run by complete retards! How about some *real* and *useful* advice? Like install and update your antivirus software... don't normally run stuff as an admin user... don't indiscriminately open e-mail attachments... and patch patch patch those vulnerabilities!
"You hear News from the press but really it's the 'what they want you to hear' kind of news."
The fallacy in your argument is that you fail to define "they". In 1984 the govt. controlled the press, and even rewrote history. In the 1st world, the press is independent of the govt., and reports news it thinks people are interested in. If you don't like the news being reported, you even have the option of starting your own news agency. What do you propose? Force people to read news that YOU find interesting?
Vote for Pedro
You're right. We're not a democracy. We're a representative republic for most issues. That is, we don't bother to ask every person in America about every issue, we instead democratically select representatives who gather in Washington, D.C. to debate almost everything. Some of the issues they talk about are huge, but most of the routine things just slip by without getting the public's attention.
We select our president in the same way. We say we're voting for the president, but what we're really doing is voting for which panel of people our state will send to the Electoral College. Those people were selected by the campaign of the person whose name appears on the ballot, so it's rather certain (and contractually required) that they're going to vote for the people they're expected to, but they still have to gather and count the votes just to make sure we're doing it right. This crazy system allows a candidate who got less of the popular vote than another to pull out an upset, but is there to assure that the winning candidate must have supporters spread into many states and not just a few... the difference between getting 51% of California's vote and 98% of California's vote is wiped off the scorecard.
As for the mainstream media reporting "what they want you to hear" news, it's actually "what you want to hear" news. People like to watch car chases, and most of them don't really understand what Alan Greenspan does anyway. The beautiful thing about America is that you're not limited to one official news provider. You've got ABC, CBS, NBC/MSNBC/CNBC, Fox News, and CNN/CNN Headline/CNNfn for mainstream news, but they're not the only options. Matt Drudge is free to post whatever he wants about stories that he thinks the media is ignoring. I highly recommend against you getting all of your news just from Slashdot, but if that's your wish nobody can stop you. The mainstream media just get their status because they are the sources that most of the people listen to... if more people came to Slashdot than watched Peter Jennings, then Slashdot would instantly become considered a mainstream media source. But they don't, the average person considers this place "too geeky" for them.
You know what, we even let you over-paranoid people post things on the Internet... so nobody's censoring you. Just don't take to to hard when you get modded -1 Troll.
"Of course the collective is most improved when the current leadership remains in power and has more wealth and privilege. It's only natural. "
Of course. Tax breaks for the wealthy improve the economy and create jobs. Allowing media conglomerates to grow unchecked increases efficiency, eliminates waste, and creates jobs. War must be wages in the name of peace. And it creates jobs. It is all very clear.
No free country could ever be controlled by a wealthy and privileged few. Impossible. Really, unthinkable. No one even mentions it on TV.
"Well it's not Victory - but then it's not Death either."
Social equality should have come because control over means of production is eliminated. The government that was built over 1917-1920s - the Soviets - was actually democractic. Unfortunately for us all, Stalin came to power (despite Lenin's repeated warnings) and basically murdered everybody (or at least everybody who could potentially have been a threat to him). Thus a totalitarian and authoritarian state was developed. At the same time, nomenclatura emerged, which was basically a new class of government workers. A really unfortunate and unintended result.
Social equality can work to some extent in truly democratic countries (where you don't have oligarchy, families and even dynasties of politicians, legalised bribes, etc.). So we cannot be sure at this stage that it can't work in communism.
As per your next comment about communism's poor track record, the main problem is that it wasn't tried that much. There have been only a couple examples of governments really taking the ideology seriously (only to some extent) and they all have achieved surprisingly good results, given the conditions in which they started.
Speaking specifically of the problems that they faced, the biggest one, I believe, was the lack of feedback and freedom. And that wasn't a failure of communism, but a characteristic result of Stalin's dictatorship.
Please also note that the prerequisites to the communism are advanced science and technology, and well educated and well brought up population. Advanced management information systems also come handy. Today we would have much better chances if we try communism once again.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
From the article: "We're working with a variety of hardware and software partners to provide this level of protection against future viruses, threats from hackers or anyone seeking to acquire personal information or digital property with malicious intent," Gates said.
How will this technology divine what someone's "intent" is, without doing a considerable amount of thought-policing?