[wellylug] FW: [opensourcenz] Open Source Developers Network

[Klenner, Colin]

Really getting serious!

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Harrison [mailto:peterha at nothingbutnet.co.nz]
Sent: Friday, 2 November 2001 1:52
To: opensourcenz at egressive.co.nz
Subject: [opensourcenz] Open Source Developers Network


Greetings,

I am a developer in Auckland running the Open Source Developers Resource
site:
http://www.devcentre.org

I recently sent the following letter to Paul Swain, Minister of IT:

Dear Mr Swain,

Recently I co-signed a Open Letter to you regarding Open Source, and its use
with New Zealand and specifically New Zealand Government.  The letter was
co-signed by something like 300 people, a huge majority of whom were
Information Technology Professionals.

I am writing this letter to discuss one aspect of the use of Microsoft
Windows.  That aspect is National Security. The US Government have not
exactly kept it secret that they consider all other countries legitimate
'intelligence' sources, even their allies, as demonstrated by their
intelligence gathering stations around the world.  New Zealand even
participates in this activity by keeping a intelligence gathering station on
New Zealand soil.

There is already some documented history of US Agencies attempting to
convince overseas encryption companies to place back doors into their
software.  It is hard to believe that the US Government wouldn't try to
place such back doors into other commercial software developed on US soil.

Windows is now about 1GB of code.  Virtually anywhere in that code could be
a backdoor to allow US intelligence agencies access. Its hard enough for
Microsoft to find the inadvertant errors in their own code, so trying to
detect the back door by reverse engineering would be virtually impossible.
With a large number of computers currently connected to the Internet there
is a huge potential for Microsoft or the US Governement to use such a back
door to gather intelligence from friendly Governments.

This is the bottom line: Microsoft Windows is a serious National Security
Threat.  If you are running Windows on your PC right now, and have access to
the Internet, how do you know that confidential information is not being
posted directly to the US Government as we speak?

While I understand the need to come to agreements to for installing Windows
in schools, I am very concerned that use of Windows in the top ranks of
Governement presents a very serious security threat.

Regards,

Peter Harrison



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