07.15.13
Ubuntu and SUSE ‘Cloud’ Users Spied on Through Microsoft Windows Azure (With NSA Back Doors)
Summary: Why running GNU/Linux distributions on top of Azure is begging not only to be taxed by Microsoft but also to be under surveillance by Microsoft and the NSA/CIA
OEMs should not preload Windows on PCs because they turn these PCs into spying devices right out of the box (there are NSA back doors in Windows) and no government should ever touch anything from Microsoft anymore (mind this silly promotion), especially knowing how the NSA spies on ‘ally’ governments. Everything has changes since Snowden put out there evidence to show what many of us already knew for years. Here is a bunch of new Windows back doors for those who believe it’s old news (the NSA gets prior notifications about those holes before they are plugged).
“Everything has changes since Snowden put out there evidence to show what many of us already knew for years.”A few days ago we got confirmation of Microsoft not only engaging in Skype spying/eavesdropping (in real-time) but also allowing others to do so. It’s not a design flaw, it’s intentional. Dan Gilmore said, “How can any business even begin to trust Microsoft now?”
When Dr. Glyn Moody, another occasional author who writes for The Guardian found out about NSA book doors, he wrote the article “How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?” This article went viral and also got some translations. It makes similar points to the ones above. Anybody foolish enough to still trust Microsoft is simply deserving of the Darwin Award.
The news about Microsoft-NSA collusion received a lot of press coverage, including some in pro-FOSS sites, even in numerous different languages (I saw over a hundred headlines while researching the subject). This is really hurting Microsoft, which is struggling to spin what it just cannot denied. Not only was Microsoft shown to be colluding with the NSA (PRISM lists Microsoft as the first partner) but it also got caught lying to the public.
“Given what we know, surveillance just ought to be the expectation, not a theory or an hypothesis.”At this stage, anybody foolish enough to host anything on Microsoft Azure just simply deserves to be spied on. Given what we know, surveillance just ought to be the expectation, not a theory or an hypothesis. Canonical was stupid enough to end up aiding the criminals when it signed a deal with the devil (Azure). Then again, it’s not as though Canonical cherishs users’ privacy; it gives Amazon (hence the NSA) some data about users’ local searches — something which even Microsoft is not doing just yet (although other reports which Richard Stallman speaks of say that this has been going on for many years). Knowing that Microsoft uses faux ‘encryption’ with back doors, expect nothing to be secure. It’s just not designed to be secure, it’s designed to serve US “national security”, which basically means US interests — whatever they may be.
Given SUSE’s financial dependence on Microsoft, it is not surprising to see it being hosted on Microsoft servers with surveillance. Watch this new interview with a SUSE official. Notice how almost the entire interview is about Microsoft and it says:
MS and Linux at Loggerheads is History: Peter Lees, Suse
[...]
SUSE Linux is in a great position of being the only enterprise Linux recommended for Microsoft and VMware.
Microsoft would like tax GNU/Linux through SUSE, with or without Azure in the underlying platform.
Gilmore and Moody are currently being joined by John Dvorak, who explains “Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft” (after the NSA revelations). To quote:
If anyone should be mad at the NSA for all the snooping that appears to be going on, it should be the Department of Commerce, not privacy advocates. The recent revelations are not a threat to national security so much as a threat to the national economy. And if I were Microsoft, I’d be having around-the-clock meetings to discuss how to fix what is about to happen.
Microsoft, despite denials, appears to be in bed with the NSA. Apparently all encryption and other methods to keep documents and discussions private are bypassed and accessible by the NSA and whomever it is working with. This means a third party, for whatever reason, can easily access confidential business deals, love letters, government classified memos, merger paperwork, financial transactions, intra-corporate schemes, and everything in between.
Anybody who puts GNU/Linux on top of Azure should not only expect to pay patent tax to Microsoft but should also expect government surveillance on everything. We know that storage servers as a whole, not just routers, have back doors. Free software and GNU/Linux are the way to go, provided there is no proprietary bug in the stack. █
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