A Microsoft flack says that the foundation created by their settlement will be technology agnostic. Schools that are funded by the foundation will be free to apply for grants to purchase any hardware or software they like. The free software provided by Microsoft will obviously consist of Microsoft products.
Does anyone know what the legal recourse is for people, companies, and charities that have had their assets frozen by the US government for allegedly supporting Al Qaeda? I keep reading and hearing denials of involvement with Al Qaeda, but I have no idea what these organizations can do about the asset freeze. Just the other day, NPR had a story about Muslim charities that are on the US government list, and today I read about a Somalian ISP that’s had its assets frozen. I have no idea whether these organizations provide financial support for terrorists, but it does seem like they’re being punished without any proof of their complicity.
Looking at old copies of my site in the Web Archive, I discovered that one of the intermittent database server errors that have plagued this site was archived for posterity.
Two words: Magic Lantern. The scariest paragraph in the article:
At least one antivirus software company, McAfee Corp., contacted the FBI on Wednesday to ensure its software wouldn’t inadvertently detect the bureau’s snooping software and alert a criminal suspect.
Needless to say, I won’t be using McAfee’s antivirus software on my computers.
The weird thing is that a system like this relies on poor security on the victim’s machine in order to be installed successfully. Does this mean that the FBI, which is responsible for investigating and fighting some computer-related crime, has an incentive not to help vendors find and close security holes? If the FBI relies on a particular buffer overflow to implant their trojan on the computers they want to snoop, do they keep the vendor in the dark or encourage them to leave the security hole in their software? This approach is fraught with major problems …