NSA

My pastor is a very wise man. The wisest I’ve ever seen. And if I’d ever had had reason to doubt that, all doubt was banished this week. About 5 or 6 years ago, Pastor Mitchell bought his family a new computer, a Leading Edge 486DX 33. As I was setting it up for them, he said something at the time that I dismissed as naive. He told me that it wouldn’t surprise him if there were things inside the computer that allowed the government and the makers of the software to track us and what we did with the computer. I dismissed him out of hand on the basis that, with so many people using this hardware and software that we were sure – no, absolutely sure – to find any “hidden” things floating around inside the chips or the code.

Well, then Intel went and announced that they were putting a unique identification number in their Pentium III cores. Some large web sites jumped on this and promised better customer service through it’s use, but we knew better. It would be used against you, both commercially, and possibly criminally. The reaction was a large public outcry denouncing such a move. The argument went back and forth, and lo and behold… it quietly slipped out that Intel had already been doing it! Well, that took the wind out of everyone’s sails. We had already been had. What was the point of fighting it now? So Intel stayed their course, and are putting the id numbers in the chip. In the great spirit of American capitalism, motherboard manufacturers started putting options in the BIOS to turn off the CPU ID feature, and all I’ve come across from that time have it disabled by default.

I ate some crow, and told my pastor about it. He was unsurprised.

Then came the allegation that there are two back doors in the cryptography routines in every copy of Windows. One for Microsoft, and one for the government, specifically the National Security Agency. This is so far out there, that you’d think there would be serious backlash. You’d think that this would call for some whistleblowing, like the nation-wide wiretapping at all of the big routers for the internet and the phone company. But what are you going to do about it? Fight Microsoft? Fight the Feds?

You’re going to switch to Free Software. That’s what you’re going to do.

And I’m eating crow. Again.

What does this mean to you? I don’t know, but I know what it means to me. It makes me really glad that Philip Zimmerman has basically devoted his life to putting strong public-key cryptography in the hands of everyone. Given the government’s distress over the dissementation of his software, I’m pretty sure he was on to something. Further, it makes me really glad that I use Free Software. Why? Because you cannot hide backdoors for the government or the world’s largest corporations in software that’s open source.

This implies something: legislation. When organizations as large as the US goverment or Microsoft (or IBM or whoever) want something bad enough, they will eventually give people in Washington enough money to get their way. Remember the clipper chip? How about the broadcast flag? These aren’t just random attempts at monitoring how information flows through society for control or profit in the name of “safety” or “convenience;” these are very real moves against the rights the Constitution is supposed to protect: the rights to free speech, a free press, and free assembly.

All I know is that, despite however this settles out, we’re really on our own for taking care of security. There’s no one else going to do it for us. There are too many agendas out there, known and unknown. If you have any concern whatsoever for your privacy, use encryption.