MS provides US Govt's Orwellian Database?
on
Gates and Security
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· Score: 2, Informative
People are harbouring misgivings about Palladium et al and so in a effort to allay their fears and general suspicions, Bill Gates utters what to me are hollow words indeed.
A controlling body such as the American political administration would covet very highly the ability to keep an extremely detailed and up-to-the-minute database on whomever they so wished and considering the size of the population in the United States of America today, keeping such close tabs on that amount of people would be a daunting, if not impossible, task. Since the introduction of the IBM compatible personal computer (PC) a few short decades ago, it and its spinoffs (PDA's etc) have become more of a necessity in the daily life for those people who live in a civilized urban or city environment and less of a luxury/novelty/curiosity item as they used to be. Now, loaded onto the vast majority of these computers worldwide is one of Microsoft's Windows operating systems. Here then is the perfect opportunity for said administration - in close collaboration with one of their major campaign sponsors mind you - to keep under close scrutiny millions of Americans with a degree of precision that would have been considered impossible only two decades ago. Microsoft's Palladium software will become all pervasive. It will become mandatory to have it installed on all practically all consumer computing devices which are
capable of running an operating system (gaming consoles, PDA's, laptops, watches, mobile phones, home entertainment systems, car stereo systems etc) and furthermore, this trusted (trusted by whom exactly?) operating system will quietly, constantly and discreetly be feeding information into either one, huge database or numerous databases.
Of course, this is all speculation, but we all know how absolute power corrupts and one only has to look at the history of mankind to see that there are few - if any - exceptions to the rule. United States Presidents come and go but the underlying administration/power structure remains and quite frankly, it is probably as Machiavellian as any government can possibly be (although they are unfortunately not alone in this regard) - irrespective of whom is currently occupying the Whitehouse. Once the Uinted States government has declared that all non-TCPA compliant computing devices and untrusted operating systems (i.e. not Palladium) are illegal (using the PATRIOT Act to bolster it of course), then the rest of the civilized world will surely follow. If anyone or any country appears to be intending to "break ranks" as it were, then Microsoft - with the full support of the current U.S. government it seems (as the adage goes; "birds of a feather flock together") - will do its utmost to prevent such a rebellion. For instance, a few months ago, Microsoft managed to arrange to have the US ambassador to Peru petition the Peruvian government on Microsoft's behalf shortly after Peru stated their positive stance with regards to the use of open source software and earlier this week, Craig Mundie from Microsoft met with the Brazilian Minister for Education. That to me alone is a cause for concern. Sure. Banks may do it (although I've never heard of a bank arranging to have their country's Ambassador do their bidding) - but they're banks - not software companies.
As I said before, this is all pure speculation - but nevertheless, after looking at their past track record, I would not put it past them.
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...will quite probably never be removed from power
roflmao!!! Excellent!
A controlling body such as the American political administration would covet very highly the ability to keep an extremely detailed and up-to-the-minute database on whomever they so wished and considering the size of the population in the United States of America today, keeping such close tabs on that amount of people would be a daunting, if not impossible, task. Since the introduction of the IBM compatible personal computer (PC) a few short decades ago, it and its spinoffs (PDA's etc) have become more of a necessity in the daily life for those people who live in a civilized urban or city environment and less of a luxury/novelty/curiosity item as they used to be. Now, loaded onto the vast majority of these computers worldwide is one of Microsoft's Windows operating systems. Here then is the perfect opportunity for said administration - in close collaboration with one of their major campaign sponsors mind you - to keep under close scrutiny millions of Americans with a degree of precision that would have been considered impossible only two decades ago. Microsoft's Palladium software will become all pervasive. It will become mandatory to have it installed on all practically all consumer computing devices which are capable of running an operating system (gaming consoles, PDA's, laptops, watches, mobile phones, home entertainment systems, car stereo systems etc) and furthermore, this trusted (trusted by whom exactly?) operating system will quietly, constantly and discreetly be feeding information into either one, huge database or numerous databases.
Of course, this is all speculation, but we all know how absolute power corrupts and one only has to look at the history of mankind to see that there are few - if any - exceptions to the rule. United States Presidents come and go but the underlying administration/power structure remains and quite frankly, it is probably as Machiavellian as any government can possibly be (although they are unfortunately not alone in this regard) - irrespective of whom is currently occupying the Whitehouse. Once the Uinted States government has declared that all non-TCPA compliant computing devices and untrusted operating systems (i.e. not Palladium) are illegal (using the PATRIOT Act to bolster it of course), then the rest of the civilized world will surely follow. If anyone or any country appears to be intending to "break ranks" as it were, then Microsoft - with the full support of the current U.S. government it seems (as the adage goes; "birds of a feather flock together") - will do its utmost to prevent such a rebellion. For instance, a few months ago, Microsoft managed to arrange to have the US ambassador to Peru petition the Peruvian government on Microsoft's behalf shortly after Peru stated their positive stance with regards to the use of open source software and earlier this week, Craig Mundie from Microsoft met with the Brazilian Minister for Education. That to me alone is a cause for concern. Sure. Banks may do it (although I've never heard of a bank arranging to have their country's Ambassador do their bidding) - but they're banks - not software companies.
As I said before, this is all pure speculation - but nevertheless, after looking at their past track record, I would not put it past them.