07.01.13

Gemini version available ♊︎

The British Military Gives the United States Back Doors Into All of Its Computers

Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 9:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The British “army/navy/RAF have surrendered sovereignty again” –Glyn Moody

Ministry of Defence

Summary: National security of the UK still in the hands of the NSA and other intelligence branches of the United States, new software procurement deals teach us

Microsoft gives the NSA back doors, as we recently learned. Last week we could called that espionage threat, but this week we know it is not just a threat but a reality, as the European Parliament got cracked by the NSA (see our daily links for many reports on this). The former chief of the NSA and the CIA publicly goes on the record admitting this, based on this weekend’s reporting.

“MoD signs Microsoft mega licensing deal for 180,000 PCs,” says a new headline from Paul Kunert in the Microsoft ads-filled British news site (a police deal too got signed not too long ago). For those who are not familiar with the MoD, we wrote about it some years ago, almost concurring with the time Techrights seemingly got infiltrated by British police. When our government pays almost $10,000 per Windows desktop per year we are left assuming these are inherently corrupt deals. Here is the latest: “The Ministry of Defence renewed a three-year Microsoft Enterprise Agreement late on Friday with Software Box Ltd (SBL) for 180,000 seats in a deal that sources value at roughly £15m per year.

“SBL has held the Microsoft EA with the MoD for the past nine years and channel folk are not surprised the Large Account Reseller won the latest tender, which had been issued to nine suppliers on Lot 3 of the Commodity IT Hardware & Software framework weeks ago.”

It is quite a clever way to subsidise Microsoft at taxpayers’ expense, leaving the international surveillance apparatus in place. And “so the army/navy/RAF have surrendered sovereignty again,” writes Glyn Moody in Twitter.

The incestuous relationship between the US war machine and that of the British, including surveillance at the wire level, e.g. on Germany and other EU members, sure is troubling. Given the ‘special’ Anglo-Saxon relationship, this is not shocking though. A lot of people knew about it for years and now we have many documents to show this.

For those who still think that security spin in The H can somehow suggest that Microsoft cares about security, it is important to explain that to Microsoft security means national (US) security, not security for computer users. With proprietary software this is easy to attain. The H shows how Opera (proprietary) became a security compromise only in Windows (proprietary). To quote: “Windows users seem to have been hit the hardest, since not all Windows versions check the certificate. Wilton-Jones tries to reassure users saying the malware did not affect the Opera installation itself; the autoupdate delivered trojan was
installed directly onto the operating system.” Here is the word from Opera.

For those who insist that the MoD chose Windows because it’s better, well, there is no actual reason for choosing Microsoft, definitely no technical reasons. Vista 8 is an utter disaster and even the same publication as above wrote some days ago that “Microsoft partners seriously underwhelmed by Windows 8.1″, providing the following as backing for what can be seen as generalisation:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer promised a flood of touch-enabled devices to fill the market as he previewed Windows 8.1, but is the technology channel raring to snap them up? Not really, it seems.

Redmond’s very own bald eagle last night said the “rapid release” upgrade – which comes with a revolutionary Start button – will blend “desktop and modern computing experiences”, and the market should expect “literally an outpouring” of touch devices.

Major changes are expected amid Microsoft’s market decline and ZDNet, another Microsoft-friendly site, says that Windows is broken:

When the ecosystem is broken, you gotta blame the platform

[...]

This is another aspect of the broken Windows ecosystem. Microsoft makes a big splash with consumers building up the availability of Windows 8.1 and enticing mainstream customers to install it. The warning above was buried in a blog post and nowhere near the promotional material pushing customers to install the pre-release version.

Microsoft apparently knew that hardware partners might not be ready to handle the new Windows, but released it anyway. There’s no telling what will happen to owners of the devices listed above who install the new version, and I’m not going to find out, given the warning.

“Buyer beware” is always appropriate, but if you can’t trust the platform maker, then who can you trust to watch your back?

In this writer’s opinion, this is a clear example of Microsoft not putting the customer first and handling things in a way to guarantee a smooth experience. It’s another instance of Microsoft releasing an update to its own product, yet not allowing partners to get ready for it so customers have no problems. In a way, this instance is even worse than usual, as it’s obvious that given the warning statement above, Microsoft knew that owners of these popular devices should exert caution with the update installation.

To summarise, there is no reason for the British army to commit to Windows for years to come, neither for security-centric reasons nor for technical reasons. This seems like yet another sellout associated with people who reign over society and want to control/dominate. Isn’t that, after all, what militaries are about?

No intelligence apparatus should be complacent about working with NSA-controlled software. As the NSA already cracked ‘allies’ like the European Union, the NSA just cannot be trusted by anyone. Having spoken to some friends about it today, they too agree that the UK should foster its own IT companies and only ever deploy Free software whose integrity is assured domestically.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 28/05/2023: eGates System Collapses, More High TCO Stories (Microsoft Windows)

    Links for the day



  2. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 27, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, May 27, 2023



  3. No More Twitter, Mastodon, and Diaspora for Tux Machines (Goodbye to Social Control Media)

    People would benefit from mass abandonment of such pseudo-social pseudo-media.



  4. Links 28/05/2023: New Wine and More

    Links for the day



  5. Links 27/05/2023: Plans Made for GNU's 40th Anniversary

    Links for the day



  6. Social Control Media Needs to be Purged and We Need to Convince Others to Quit It Too (to Protect Ourselves as Individuals and as a Society)

    With the Tux Machines anniversary (19 years) just days away we seriously consider abandoning all social control media accounts of that site, including Mastodon and Diaspora; social control networks do far more harm than good and they’ve gotten a lot worse over time



  7. Anonymously Travelling: Still Feasible?

    The short story is that in the UK it's still possible to travel anonymously by bus, tram, and train (even with shades, hat and mask/s on), but how long for? Or how much longer have we got before this too gets banned under the false guise of "protecting us" (or "smart"/"modern")?



  8. With EUIPO in Focus, and Even an EU Kangaroo Tribunal, EPO Corruption (and Cross-Pollination With This EU Agency) Becomes a Major Liability/Risk to the EU

    With the UPC days away (an illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo court system, tied to the European Union in spite of critical deficiencies) it’s curious to see EPO scandals of corruption spilling over to the European Union already



  9. European Patent Office (EPO) Management Not Supported by the EPO's Applicants, So Why Is It Still There?

    This third translation in the batch is an article similar to the prior one, but the text is a bit different (“Patente ohne Wert”)



  10. EPO Applicants Complain That Patent Quality Sank and EPO Management Isn't Listening (Nor Caring)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German (here is the first of the batch); the following is the second of the three (“Kritik am Europäischen Patentamt – Patente ohne Wert?”)



  11. German Media About Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) and the European Patent Office (EPO)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German; this is the first of the three (“Industrie kritisiert Europäisches Patentamt”)



  12. Geminispace Continues to Grow Even If (or When) Stéphane Bortzmeyer Stops Measuring Its Growth

    A Gemini crawler called Lupa (Free/libre software) has been used for years by Stéphane Bortzmeyer to study Gemini and report on how the community was evolving, especially from a technical perspective; but his own instance of Lupa has produced no up-to-date results for several weeks



  13. Links 27/05/2023: Goodbyes to Tina Turner

    Links for the day



  14. HMRC: You Can Click and Type to Report Crime, But No Feedback or Reference Number Given

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were reported 7 days ago to HMRC (equivalent to the IRS in the US, more or less); but there has been no visible progress and no tracking reference is given to identify the report



  15. IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 26, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, May 26, 2023



  16. One Week After Sirius Open Source Was Reported to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for Tax Fraud: No Response, No Action, Nothing...

    One week ago we reported tax abuses of Sirius ‘Open Source’ to HMRC; we still wait for any actual signs that HMRC is doing anything at all about the matter (Sirius has British government clients, so maybe they’d rather not look into that, in which case HMRC might be reported to the Ombudsman for malpractice)



  17. Links 26/05/2023: Weston 12.0 Highlights and US Debt Limit Panic

    Links for the day



  18. Gemini Links 26/05/2023: New People in Gemini

    Links for the day



  19. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 25, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, May 25, 2023



  20. Links 26/05/2023: Qt 6.5.1 and Subsystems in GNUnet

    Links for the day



  21. Links 25/05/2023: Mesa 23.1.1 and Debian Reunion

    Links for the day



  22. Links 25/05/2023: IBM as Leading Wayland Pusher

    Links for the day



  23. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 24, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, May 24, 2023



  24. Links 25/05/2023: Istio 1.16.5 and Curl 8.1.1

    Links for the day



  25. Gemini Links 25/05/2023: On Profit and Desire for Gemini

    Links for the day



  26. SiliconANGLE: Sponsored by Microsoft and Red Hat to Conduct the Marriage Ceremony

    SiliconANGLE insists that paying SiliconANGLE money for coverage does not lead to bias, but every sane person who keeps abreast of SiliconANGLE — and I read their entire feed every day — knows that it’s a ludicrous lie (Red Hat/IBM and the Linux Foundation also buy puff pieces and “event coverage” from SiliconANGLE, so it’s marketing disguised as “journalism”



  27. Links 24/05/2023: Podman Desktop 1.0, BSDCan 2024, and More

    Links for the day



  28. Gemini Links 24/05/2023: Razors, Profit, and More

    Links for the day



  29. [Meme] When the Patent Office Controls Kangaroo Patent Courts and Judges

    The EPO has been hijacked by industry and its lobbyists; now the same is happening to EU patent courts, even though it is illegal and unconstitutional



  30. The Illegally 'Revised' Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) is Disgracing the Perception of Law and Order in the European Union

    The Unified Patent Court (UPC) isn’t legal, the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) is being altered on the fly (by a person patently ineligible to do so), and so it generally looks like even patent courts across Europe might soon become as corrupt as the European Patent Office, which has no basis in the Rule of the Law and is basically just a front for large corporations (most of them aren’t even European)


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts