There is a stupid story up on Gizmodo that is so blatently wrong. I’m guessing Gizmodo reprinted it for interest reasons, but they didn’t debunk it.

It goes like this:

Officials in the UK are whining about how hard it will be to snoop on people with the upcoming Microsoft Vista, slated to be released this December. Ross Anderson, an academic type from the University of Cambridge, told members of Parliament that Vista’s data encryption would make it difficult to pry into the personal lives of its users.

Linux, OS X, Windows 2000, Windows XP and many other OS already have built in encryption. That kills the supposed story dead right there. Also, another nail in the coffin, snooped data is not admissable in UK courts.

British officials are said to be in talks with Microsoft on ways of finding or creating a backdoor so that the government can have access to the contents of the hard drives of its constituents. Here’s hoping Big Brother will need special permission before doing such things, and that our own Department of Homeland Security doesn’t catch wind of this.

UK governement do not want a backdoor in Vista. Why? They will be using Vista on the UK government network, a backdoor would be too great a vulnrability. (Based on the fact they used 2000 and XP). If Vista was found to have a backdoor in it, the UK government could not use it by Home Office security rules.

How do I know this? I work in UK governement IT security.

Link

Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and not related to employer/UK Government. No claims are made to be representing anyone other than myself.

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