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Several Western Govts. Ban Lenovo Equipment From Sensitive Networks
renai42 writes "If you've been in the IT industry for a while, you'll know that Lenovo's ThinkPad brand has a strong reputation with large organisations for quality, dating back to the brand's pre-2005 ownership by IBM. However, all that may be set to change with the news that the defence agencies of key Western governments such as Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand have banned Lenovo gear from being used in sensitive areas, because of concerns that the Chinese vendor has been leaving back doors in its devices for the Chinese Government. No evidence has yet been presented to back the claims, but Lenovo remains locked out of sensitive areas of these governments. Is it fearmongering? Or is there some legitimate basis for the ban?"
Windows can be very solid with some tweaking and only running trusted apps. It's when you open it up to third party software and drivers that haven't been thoroughly tested that you really run into issues. Sure, it's possible to get a BSoD regardless of what you do, but it's also possible for Linux or OSX installs to break too.
They're only worried about back doors, not back windows. There's no way the Chinese could sneak fat American secrets out through a window.
The official statement is as follows:
[REDACTED]
Indeed. I was trusting the NSA to backup all my data, and now they cannot even find their own emails. I guess I'll have to do my own backup, after all. ;-)
Erh... the only country that has a proven track of spying on other countries recently is one that has troubles getting its snow back to its den. And while a large portion thereof belongs to China, it's not quite the same country ... yet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.