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Have a Privacy-Invasion Wishlist? Peruse NSA's Top Secret Catalog
An anonymous reader writes with a link to Der Spiegel, which describes a Top-Secret spy-agency catalog which reveals that the NSA "has been secretly back dooring equipment from US companies including Dell, Cisco, Juniper, IBM, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and more, risking enormous damage to US tech sector." Der Spiegel also has a wider ranging article about the agency's Tailored Access Operations unit.
Don't think for a second that these back-doors that companies put in at the behest of the NSA aren't also being used to the benefit of those companies.
So, if the NSA were shuttered tomorrow, what makes you think those back-doors are going to go away? How much is it worth to those tech companies to know exactly what their customers are doing? How much is it worth to their institutional shareholders?
See, the ugliest part of this is that it's a two-headed monster. Fight one head and the other one will come around and bite you. Both government and corporations have come to believe that they are beyond our reach, above reproach and entitled to everything you have.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unfortunately I don't have the skill set and there doesn't seem to be any other way to support them.
If you have a machine that supports it, Coreboot could be a very interesting solution.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.