Frank Burns Blog
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Why do we let them do this ?
Everyone has seen the horror storeis of what happens to unsecured computers (or at least I hope they have). Botnets, spambots, identity theft, spoofing and more. So why, in the name of good fuck, are governments getting into this business ? The FBI has started installing spyware on computers. Oh, all in a good cause of course, the same justification that has often been used for genocide. While I dont want to debate the ethics or legality of this move, I do want to touch on the praciticalities of it.
To do this the spyware has to be able to subvert any security software installed on the target machine. Your anti-virus, your firewall, your ad spam scanner etc. This is only possible in one of two ways. Either they are exploiting security holes that they know about but have not informed the IT security community about or they require the vendors of said software to compromise their own products ! Either of these options is deeply shady and a direct attack on your private property (your computer). Neal Stephenson dealt with this subject matter in his fantastic masterpiece Cryptonomicon and I cant say it any better than he does (so go read the bloody book if you haven’t already).
If only games ran on Linux then I would be there like a shot. In the open source community any governmental attempt to subvert security software like this would be given short shrift.
Previous entry: This is some freaky shit ..-
Quite irrelevant, but I just got my first virus 2 days ago, and that was from runnning a dodgy keygen executable. I deserved what I got.
The FBI are welcome to my own PC contents. It’s just another link in the crazy chain that is America’s paranoia. Good luck to them. The hole they’ve dug is deep enough already.
xibxang on 07/20 at 01:33 AM -
It may just be paranoia, but I am not happy at the idea of spyware being put on my PC whether by some mad hacker/spammer/thief. Given how much shit the financial services sector get about customers’ information security and how little shit has been piled upon our own Government exploiting our data for their own financial gain (DVLA database anyone?)
Let’s not start on the reasons why the EU (usually a bit neo-liberal for my liking) doesn’t give the US authorities all the items of info they want on inbound air passengers - if the EU has rubbish data protection how much less must there be in the US?
I just do not trust anyone given such wide power over access to my personal “stuff”.
on 07/31 at 09:39 PM