Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Training May Have Helped Tunisian Regime To Spy On Citizens
An anonymous reader writes "A document released in the recent Cablegate leak reveals that Microsoft provided training to the Tunisian Ministries of Justice and the Interior in exchange for exemption from the country's open software policy. These Ministries would soon put the training to use by phishing for the social networking credentials of bloggers, reporters, political activists and protesters. Microsoft's assistance resulted in the sale of 12,000 software licenses to the Tunisian government."
The cable itself details the effort Microsoft put into negotiating a deal. Their clear intent was simply expanding into a new market, but the author of the cable was skeptical of the Tunisian government's adherence to its stated goals. Quoting: "In theory, increasing GOT law enforcement capability through IT training is positive, but given heavy-handed GOT interference in the internet, Post questions whether this will expand GOT capacity to monitor its own citizens."
Can anyone knowledgable comment? There are quite a few articles around saying that the key thing that MS did was to put in a certificate for the Tunisian Government in Windows / Internet explorer which let them intercept any domain they wanted to; See this posting in Scribd. If that's true it's a much more serious betrayal of their users by Microsoft.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Well even the summary notes that Microsoft was basically offering them generic computer training. Now slashdot (note that we don't even have article here!) needs a good MS-bashing title - hey, lets go with "Microsoft helped Tunisia to spy on citizen". No, we need to tone it down a little.. what about "Microsoft may have helped Tunisia to spy on citizens"? Good.
Seriously, all Microsoft knew was giving them computer training. What about we start writing news on how school chemistry classes allow people to make bombs? Or god forbid, cooking tv shows teach you how to use a knife!
Because it gets known now? You don't think MS is the only company that doesn't give half a shit about who they sell to, do you? If there's not an outright embargo (that has to be circumvented somehow), anyone can buy anything if the price is right. Hell, IBM sold computers to the Nazis, knowing quite well just what they will be used for.
You think any corporation would have acted different in any way? Corporations are the pinnacle of capitalist evolution: Intelligence without conscience.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Gates is rich enough. But I'm guessing the local sales rep isn't a billionaire yet.
No, but that only makes it even worse: That sales rep sold out an entire country's people in exchange for a few grand worth of commissions.
More to the point, somebody hired a sales rep willing to do that. And that willingness stems from a flaw in Microsoft's business model. The quality and price of their products has never matched their market share; they subsist on inertia and lock-in. The problem with that model is that all it would take to break it is for a single medium-sized country to decide that they would rather spend a billion dollars once to implement all of the APIs, file format converters, migration tools, etc. to make switching from Microsoft to FOSS easy and popular in order to avoid having that same country's government and people continue to pay an even greater amount of money every year to a foreign corporation. The last thing in the world they need is for some oil-rich dictators to conclude that they could implement a feature-complete open-source equivalent of Exchange Server for less than the amount of money their country pays to license it.
So when Tunisia or China or whoever else comes to Microsoft and makes demands, Microsoft bends. Because Microsoft can't afford for those countries to make the path away from Microsoft's ecosystem simple, well-documented and conspicuous. So yes, you can blame the sales rep who did the deed, but that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft has left itself in the position that it has to yield to crackpot dictators who violate human rights in order to maintain its market dominance.
So, the USA torture practices come to light, the USA illegal wars, the USA illegal everything... and those same guys see MS doing something that might be stupid from a human perspective, but no where near the level of the USA as a country in itself... is pointing the finger???? Man, you guys here still don't get the cables. It's the fucking USA that is the enemy! YES! Even if you are a USA Citizen. I might as well say, especially if you are a US citizen. Those people, that lead your country, not the guy in the White House... are fucking war criminals at best! Do something about it! We (the rest of the world) can't! Prove for once America is about freedom. But think about real freedom for once. Not just freedom on your own continent. The world doesn't turn around you. Let alone the universe. We have one earth and we have to make it together. And right now we are fucking it up. And that fucking up is being orchestrated by a handful very powerful people. Having said that... Peace. We need to stick together. Because our children will hopefully be smarter.
The linked source even says that Microsoft agreed to help train handicapped workers to telecommute so they could get employment. MS: being evil by helping all those damned cripples. The whole summary is a massive sensationalist attempt to create a "scandal" where none really exists, or rather where no proof of one really exists (maybe MS helped Tunisia, maybe they didn't.) Otherwise, this is just a pretty standard trade deal for IT software. Not illegal, probably not even immoral at all. Maybe there is more to it, but I don't think so. Computer training is not hard to find, these days, what MS was really selling was the licenses (which don't help Tunisia with it's crackdown at all) and what MS got was Tunisia using less pirated software. Oh, and note the part where all this happened before the trouble, and it was a five-year in the making deal.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
MS is a business, It does not care about people, It would sell Windows licenses and database to the Devil if it could make a profit.
GE makes missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.
Caterpillar sells bulldozers to Israel that are used to run over and kill people, as well as illegal home demolitions.
In other news, blissfully ignorant American is ignorant.
http://www.fhimt.com/leaks/contrat-entre-microsoft-et-le-gouvernement-tunisien/
Support de l'autorité de certification électronique reconnue au niveau de Microsoft IE
Microsoft inclura dans son cycle de mise à jour des autorités de certificats au niveau d'Internet Explorer, le support de l'autorité de certification nationale. De son coté, le Gouvernement Tunisien procédera à une demande écrite dans ce sense auprès de Microsoft pour la mise en place de cette procédure
google translation:
Support for electronic certification authority recognized at Microsoft IE
Microsoft will include in its cycle of updating the certificate authorities in Internet Explorer, support for the national certification authority. For its part, the Tunisian Government will make a written request in this sense to
Microsoft's implementation of this procedure.
English translation:
Tunisia's certificate authority allows it to release it's own SSL certificates. Microsoft agrees to include Tunisia's CA certificates in Internet Explorer updates.
Thats fine. But it also allows the dictator to spoof https sites and thus snoop on people even if they are using SSL. There is evidence that exactly this has happened in Tunisia with sites like gmail. See
http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/07/05/mass-gmail-phishing-in-tunisia/
I know there is a lot of bullshit assumptions in some of the articles on this issue, but there is definitely some fire at the heart of the smoke.
I think the training was more along these lines than "Ctrl-X cuts, ctrl-V pastes..."
It means that government contracts won't be awarded to cheaper hardware based on arm processors because that's not windows compatible. The change in policy means all government contracts must use windows compatible hardware instead of cheaper stuff that only runs open source. And as long as the hardware supports it microsoft has the option to bribe/leverage their software onto the hardware.
Your're batshit insane.
And you're intentionally blind to reality.
offering general computer training--that was Microsoft's only intent,
Microsoft did these things because they are a deeply unethical company that is so obsessed with eliminating competitors they are prepared to trample civil rights if it forwards their goals.
It's interesting that you share the same ability to ignore ethics and evidence in your determination to evangelise for Microsoft.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."