Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Wins Homeland Security Contract
syzme writes "According to The Register (as well as Reuters and News.com), 'The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has signed a deal for Microsoft software worth something in the region of $100 million, covering servers and over 140,000 desktops. This does not however mean that Microsoft and its hench-OEM Dell are poised to hoover up all of the Department's lovely IT budget, nor indeed that this is all new money for them; largely, it seems to be more a case of Microsoft holding onto business it's already got.'" This shouldn't be much of a surprise -- remember the Federal government is already Microsoft's biggest customer.
So much for security in our homeland...
Given Microsoft's record of continual failure with regards to security, I've always thought putting MS in charge of security (as with Palladium) was like asking the wolf to guard the sheep.
Security can only be as good as the most insecure point, which doesn't make me feel to good about Microsoft winning this contract.
Imagine this senario: DoHS employee writes up a memo about who they are currently profiling and what information they have on file and saves it to his hard drive. Some terrorist writes an e-mail virus designed to send word file back to an account he can access. He then sends this virus to a department account where it spreads and sensitive information is transmitted back to the terrorist.
Virusus like these have already been proven viable in MS Outlook. One can only hope that they are taking the appropriate measures to ensure that all employees have their computers locked down tight.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
One of the reasons the Feds are MS's biggist customer is becouse almost every computer has two, even three licences. Most organizations buy a site licences and then get one with the Dell PC. If only Dell sold PC's without licences...
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
This shouldn't be much of a surprise -- remember the Federal government is already Microsoft's biggest customer.
No, it shouldn't.
The US federal government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the world.
The above statement seems to imply something ugly, when in fact MANY companies' largest customer is the federal government.
That it's a lot of money. Otherwise it seems to be pretty par for the course and nothing really noteworthy.
Now a move AWAY from Microsoft would be news.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Given Microsoft's record of continual failure with regards to security, I've always thought putting MS in charge of security (as with Palladium) was like asking the wolf to guard the sheep.
Given that 'homeland security' is really a euphemism for something between 'Big Brother' ("total informational awareness" etc.) and 'Political Police', I for one am relieved they are sufficiently incompetent to select Microsoft as their platform. This may, and I stress may, slow down our slide into a complete surveillance society submerged beneath ubiquitous governance.
Or not, as it may be just the prelude needed for even more draconian legislation and public hysteria when Microsoft's chronic security issues begin to affect our perceived safety, leading to the unpleasant irony of having the technical ability to monitor and ubiquitously govern every man, woman, child, dog, cat, and garden slug in the country diminished while providing the political excuse for accelerating legislation through congress that makes the former pre-Gorbochov soviet parliament look positively liberal by comparison.
What we do know for certain is that it puts a lot of money in the pockets of a convicted monopolist, which isn't helpful to anyone (other than said monopolist).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I have no problem with the actions of MS here. The actions of the Dept. of Homeland Security on the other hand...
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
Of course, the government is not only collecting information on individuals, they collect it on anything we're involved in, including our jobs and businesses.
It's pretty well-documented that Microsoft's software is full of holes and that they're not particularly good at fixing them. Witness Microsoft's own computers being taken down by a worm. My concern is that we've just given not-so-well-intentioned foreign parties a free pass to take a look at everything that's going on in the United States. Holes and hacks will be found. If they really cared about "security," they'd use a blend of different programs and software. Sure, a little more work, but a lto more work to penetrate.
IAAL
'There are three stages in your reintegration,' said O'Brien. 'There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance. It is time for you to enter upon the second stage.' ...
Do you remember writing in your diary, "I understand how: I do not understand why"? It was when you thought about "why" that you doubted your own sanity. ...
'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore --'
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.
'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.'
'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm not happy when my government uses a convicted and virtually unchanged monopoly for big $$$ business.
I thought the United States government was supposed to protect the market from these monopolies, not protect the monopolies from the market.
Eric
"Brevity is the soul of wit." -Polonius, Hamlet.
I always thought that the Department of Home Security was a temporary thing. I guess this is a wake up call for me. I always thought that Department of Home Security would just, go away.
Something you invest $100,000,000 is designed to stay.
It's not the morality of Microsoft in question, I don't believe.
Rather, I'm inclined to ask myself why the government is such a dedicated customer to a known criminal. Let's see, we convict Microsoft for monopolistic crimes (for the second time), and then we turn around and help solidify the monopoly ourselves.
For the cost of licensing softare from Microsoft, they could be training their employees to use a more permenant solution, they could be saving taxpayers money into the future, and they could put a big ol' metaphorical boot into Microsoft's collective arse.
Don't let the lusers get you down.
If you've got 1,000 machines running Win XP and a new patch is released, you've got one patch to apply 1,000 times. If you've got 1,000 machines running fifteen operating systems, and a new patch is released for each OS, you've got 15 patches to apply. If you're going to run a secure network, you want to have a homogenous environment throughout. That way, once you've got Machine 1 secure, you know the others are also secure. You may argue that if Machine 1 is compromised, then all the rest will be compromised as well. But the problem with that argument is that if Machine 1 is compromised, even if the rest of the machines (assuming they're running different operating systems) are fine, you've still got a compromise and in government and business matters - one is too many.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
The reason that everyone (including the federal guvnment) still uses Microsoft is because, It Just Works(TM). I can pull windows out of its box, put it in my computer, and have it running in about 30 minutes. I don't have to manually pick out kernel drivers like with debian, I don't have to worry about RedHat not recognizing half my hardware (like my ATI or my AC97 sound chip). I can take any lance corporal off the field, and with windows, he's most likely to know how to at least do basic stuff like surf the web, read e-mail, etc. If the guvment were to use Linux, they would have to spend additional manpower on installation, more man power keeping those boxes up to date (or pay money for RedHats up2date service), not to mention retraining a lot of staff on how to use these computers.
Another reason for the Government choosing Windows is that they probally already have a majority of their services on windows, and to ask a Four Star General to approve a massive budget to switch away from what works to what might not work will take quite a bit of effort.
Wow....that karma just burned brightly....
Let's see, "over" 140,000 desktops which could be 144,000 desktops, so how does the following apply:
Gee, I knew M$ had apocalyptic practices, but sheesh ...
As others have observed, Microsoft is not the big winner here, although it is a winner. It gets to consolidate and aggregate its existing business, and sure it's probably squeezing Apple, IBM, etc some more here and there with this contract. And sure, it has locked down this portion of market share for FIVE MORE YEARS, which is bad. But...
The big winner is Dell. It's administering all this software business. It skims whatever it can before passing the lion's share on to Microsoft. It acquires a huge list of potential "customers" and tries to sell them Dell hardware. And it squeezes out a bunch of small fry who were ensconced in cozy government contracts. Excerpted from Government Computer News:. html:
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/22743-1
The department reached the agreement earlier this month, after inviting nine bidders, including GTSI Corp. of Chantilly, Va., and MarkSoft Management Resources Inc. of Canterbury, N.H., to present proposals.
Seriously, who are those two companies that got mentioned? Either wannabees, or hasbeens. Dell ate their lunch, and Dell has some other merchandise it would enjoy selling to the 280,000 eyeballs it just acquired for the next five years.
I dont' know man, you're linking unneducated anti linux FUD. It's not a matter of opinion, but lack of information.
I would be curious to know if you've actually looked at data, and come to the conclusion that Linux is less secure than Windows stuff. If that's the case, I might suggest that you keep on reading and get the whole picture!
Cuz security really couldn't get much worse than MS offerings.
What I'm saying is, wether or not you mean to troll, that's the net effect. If you do have a compelling reason as to why Linux would have been a poor security choice (clue: your link isn't it!), then I'm sure most people would like to hear it.
(moderators: yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think I just took the bait on this troll)
> And that would be 121 people working for 4 years!
And remember! If you work for MSFT, now you get paid in restricted stock, not stock options!
That's right! You pay all the income *tax* as if you'd cashed in stock options up front, and you get all the *risk* of owning stock! Don't you feel more motivated already? 80-hour work weeks for everyone! Woohoo!
(Sorry, son, too many of you became millionaires in the last boom. Can't have that happen again. Stock options are only for the important people now.)
$100 million / 140,000 = $714.29
Do they really need to buy seven hundred dollars of software for each computer? That must be comparable to the cost of the hardware. And people *still* consider Microsoft a viable option?
I just so happen to work for the Department of the Navy, and have since before the current administration.
And even before I started working on the base, you know what just about every workstation was? Micron P3 550MHz boxes. You know what OS was running on them? Microsoft Windows NT. Every one of them.
So don't try to tell me that large-scale government computer contracts are new and unique to the Bush administration. You clearly don't know what you're talking about.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Reality isn't so black and white as this, and I know plenty of MS-centric people who know what they're talking about, just as many Mac people who know their wares, many of whom more experienced than me I'm sure. But to say that Linux has zero support suggests that documentation isn't counted, which I count and count on daily. Speaking of documentation, Try using MS's knowledgebase to find an article on a specific issue, then hop to google.com/linux and look up how to do something specific in Linux, then tell me which one procuded a usable answer faster and easier.
As far as why more people don't use Linux, or any otehr OS, why not ask the hardware vendors that one. They sell the systems with Windows pre-installed to customers who have bought into the marketing over the years and are now floating though MS-land on auto-pilot. Someone interested in using Linux still for the most part has to install it themselves, something most people have no desire to do even to spite the OS they might percieve as evil (personally I don't think MS does anything any other profit-motivated entity would do given the position they're in; Everyone wants to own a monopoly in business, that's the reason we have public and consumer rights laws right?).
I hear end-users say "Gates is evil", "Microsoft is an monopoly", etc, all the time, though relearning their own computer is too much to do to put their feelings into some action. I can't blame them. If I wasn't interested in this stuff in the first place I'd probably be in the same situation.
Also when was the last time you saw an MS box act as a DDOS drone?
Your kidding right? Look here.
Given that there is practically no defense being offered for Microsoft nor the Dept. of Homeland Security in the above discussion, one has to wonder why these large contracts keep occurring and occurring and occurring. If they aren't based on merit, then what? What hard arguments do companies provide to keep going along with Microsoft's products? It isn't as if there were no alternatives, historically, and TCO arguments are fallacious at best.
The state of the current software industry makes me feel as if nothing is real and there is no reward for quality. It is really discouraging and makes me wonder if churning out more and more software is becoming counter-productive to the health of our civilization. Add in the recent economy, and I am beginning to see non-software-development and non-systems-administration jobs in my peripheral vision. These jobs are becoming more attractive, and it is almost to a point, where finding a job with no computer in sight is a compelling thought.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
so basicly now terrorists don't have to try as hard as before to get in and on top of that microsoft is still ready to take over the world....oh well could have been worse rather than msft/dell it could have been msft-HP or msft/e-machines *shudders*
As a die hard OpenStep X user, I have to take issue with the idea that it runs hardly any software. I suppose that your comment is born of jealousy that OS X can run pretty much all of the software that Linux can as well as a fair proportion of commercial software that will remain beyond the reach of Linux users until someone gets enough mindshare to stabilize the libraries.
FUD aside, I do agree that governments should stay the hell away from any single source supplier like MS or Apple, no matter how good their wares are. It's simply not good enough to spend hundreds of millions, or even billions of tax payer's money on something that could disappear in a puff of smoke if the head bean-counter somewhere decides it's no longer economically viable to keep producing it.
Using open source doesn't neccessarily guarantee that a piece of software will continue to be made indefinitely, but it almost defintely does assure that somewhere out there is someone who knows enough about a given piece of software to patch security holes and misfeatures in the software, and it is quite likely that even if x86 hardware ceases to be available an open source OS will find new hardware to run on that can be introduced in the next upgrade cycle.
OS/X, Windows or Solaris = tied down
*BSD, *Linux* = free to move
Governments should be free to move rather than at the behest of corporations. Of course, the reality is quite different. Pester your local politician about change, I do.