Re: USAF wants to violate federal criminal law

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Sun, 18 May 2008 16:25:58 +0200 Andrew <tor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Scott Bennett wrote:
>>      For those who are interested in seeing how little difference in principle
>> there is between the U.S. government of today and that of Stalin's U.S.S.R. of
>> yesterday, check out the article at
>>
>> 	http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/air-force-mater.html
>>
>> which discusses the Air Force's desire to be able to take over any and every
>> computer on the net, regardless of where those computers may be.  They want
>> not only to be able to take control of those computers, but also to be able
>> to install undetectable spyware.
>>   
>Sure, I want to take over every computer on the net too...
>And by the way, so does the German Federal Police (BKA). Doesn't mean 
>they can.
>Luckily there's always an antivirus-company outside of these countries' 
>jurisdiction so any "Federal Spyware" would still be detected as exactly 
>that: Spyware. No German, or U.S., law will stop Kaspersky from treating 
>that thing as what it is. On the contrary, it's a good sales argument 
>for Kaspersky ;)

     Yes, yes, of course.  Although there does seem to be a fairly steady
flow of things that go undetected by all the major security packages for
Windows for quite some time before they get noticed and dealt with.  It's
worth noting that the BSD users and even LINUX users don't have Windows
users' problem of always having to watch where they step to avoid falling
through security holes.  In fact, pretty much any other operating system
seems to be orders of magnitude safer than Windows, so that isn't what
worries me.
>
>I don't really think this is a threat to the average user or even 
>criminal. If they were really going to use a Federal Virus of some sort, 
>it would have to be custom-developed for each and every target so it 
>won't be detected easily. And no government can afford to employ 
>something that expensive on a larger scale.
>At least I hope so.
>
     Do we know for certain that the feds haven't worked some deal with
the chip manufacturers?  (I think it's only reasonable to operate on the
assumption that Microslop may well have made a deal with them.  What I
want to know is whether uglier approaches will be used to violate federal
statute that might affect better operating systems.)  What can they have
built into things like keyboards, motherboard chip sets, even DIMMs and
other memory cards, that might escape notice indefinitely?  Are there
other potential methods?


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
**********************************************************************
* Internet:       bennett at cs.niu.edu                              *
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
* "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good  *
* objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments *
* -- a standing army."                                               *
*    -- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790         *
**********************************************************************