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John McAfee: NSA's Back Door Has Given Every US Secret To Enemies (businessinsider.com)
John McAfee, American computer programmer and contributing editor of Business Insider, explains how the NSA's back door has given every U.S. secret to its enemies. He begins by mentioning the importance of software, specifically meta- software, which contains a high level set of principles designed to help a nation survive in a cyberwar. Such software must not contain any back doors under any circumstances, otherwise it can and may very likely allow perceived enemies of the U.S. to have access to top-secret information. For example, the Chinese used the NSA's back door to hack the Defense Department last year and steal 5.6 million fingerprints of critical personnel. "Whatever gains the NSA has made through the use of their back door, it cannot possibly counterbalance the harm done to our nation by everyone else's use of that same back door." McAfee believes the U.S. has failed to grasp the subtle implications of technology and, as a result, is 20 years behind the Chinese, and by association, the Russians as well.
Isn't this the guy wanted in connection with the mysterious disappearance of a former neighbor? I'm not sure I'd take anything at face value from Mr. Stability.
If he's talking about the Chinese, they don't need an NSA back door to hack systems in the U.S., they've been porking government and contractor systems for years. The Chinese have the designs for every nuclear weapon in our arsenal and the personnel records of hundreds of thousands of government workers, including their security clearance applications. What would they get from an NSA back door that they don't already have?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I thought he sided with the FBI against Apple. He thinks Apple should include a backdoor in their phones for the FBI...and now he's pointing out how dangereous backdoors are....
No, he didn't side with anyone. He offered to decrypt the phone. That's not what the FBI wants. The FBI wants Apple to produce vulnerable code. John didn't offer to produce vulnerable code. By making his offer, McAfee was illustrating that the FBI isn't after the decrypted data.
"Oh no... he found the
In the 70s there were secure operating systems like Multics. Then the only things allowed for US export were the ones that failed to be secure. That's how we got DOS then Windows. Now everything needs to be rewritten from scratch by people without commercial pressure for there to be any chance. Think about the nave ending up forced to use "Windows for warships". In the meantime the Chinese always knew they couldn't trust software from the West. 20 year head start is probably an underestimate.
Mods are being subtly ironic today.
Sunspots.
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