Finland Needs to Dump Microsoft (Microslop) for National Security Reasons and the Same is True for Hundreds of Countries
Earlier today: Shout-out to Aura Salla for Pursuing Software Freedom in Finland (not cross-posted but definitely relevant to Techrights, which wrote about her last year)
Earlier today in IRC, Sompi, a Finn, spoke of kotijenkki and noted: "I don't see why Ryssäs would want Finns to use microslop products..."
Well, "microslop," another Finn said, gives "full access to the system contents, including microphones and cameras. Russia has an acute interest in keeping track of and influencing what goes on in adjacent countries. It always had, and in recent decades microslop has enabled that at new scales not seen before in previous centuries."
"The bug doors do, as Sompi points out, also benefit the US and, I would add, Israel. Snowden had something about the sale of bug doors, that would be important to cite."
Here are some relevant articles from over a decade back:
- "The US reportedly began investing billions of dollars in the operation in 2000 after its initial efforts to install a "back door" in all" things
- "The agency has 'stonewalled' on providing any information on new guidelines following Snowden scandal."
The outrage cycle was focused on COVID-19 (at the time).
Also from 2020 (just adding stupid certificates to everything didn't solve anything truly important, it was mostly cosmetic and de facto outsourcing "trust" to the US):
Why does any country still use GAFAM? Because of resellers and moles? People who actively compromise their nation's data and therefore breach data protection laws? See how Europe's second-largest institution got away with it. The people who did this even get away with doing cocaine on the job - as disturbing as that can be to law-abiding people like the "rest of us". People who have sex with underage girls openly call for a ban on privacy. So what has gone wrong? Why is this tolerated?
As an associate puts it: "The US has rightly earned his ire in that area but I do hope that he sees that there are other interests - multiple hostile ones at that - at work promoting Microsoft too."
Is it considered "extreme" or "radical" to say that Microsoft and Palantir, for example, belong nowhere near our medical data?
On behalf of violent Americans (who spent time in jail) I've had visits to my home where they took unauthorised photos, later scattered/offloaded into legal papers by the Americans' "hired guns" in London. They're meant to be experts in data protection, yet they act like goons and I receive death threats connected to them. The Americans' "hired guns" in London all use Microsoft (US) and almost nothing but Microsoft. They sent to Microsoft all the legal documents, including ours. We'll write a lot more about this in future years. █