GOOOOD MORNING PORTLAND!

I found an interesting piece of news today that really caught my attention, and I wanted to comment on it.

The other day, the NSA testified that it had “worked on Windows 7” in conjunction with it’s release cycle. They basically stated that they worked with Microsoft during the build of Windows 7 (they did this with Vista as well) to make it more secure.

Well, the next day, various people started putting a few dots together and ended up screaming about back doors, black helicopters and government agents – you get the point.

While I know, for a fact, that Antivirus companies look the other way for specific things on computers – due to law enforcement, I haven’t seen anything on that fact for the government. As an ex-government employee, working around computers, I can say that the changes in security from XP to Vista to Windows 7 have been things the government had been doing for awhile.

There are certain ways to secure Windows, as well as other operating systems. The government has it’s own way of doing those things. I personally use some of these methods in my every day usage of my own computers. Protocol16 even uses some of these methods when securing client computers. One of the biggest things done is separating the Administrator from the User. Most people using XP or Vista use the computer in Admin mode. I’ve talked about this in the past, as well as how I think you should leave Universal Account Control (UAC) on, for security. Windows 7 takes that a step further by separating the tasks that someone does into 2 categories: User and Admin. Internet Explorer, when fired up – even from an Administrator, is started as a normal user. Even things like the Command Prompt (the older DOS looking screen with a black background and white text) is started as a User instead of Admin. These are things that I’m guessing came out of the recommendation from the Government.

I’ll give away another secret as well. The NSA is not the only organization that worked on Windows, and won’t be. Microsoft takes recommendations from thousands of companies every day. For instance, Dell worked on Windows 7 as well… They recommended changes to both Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 when they found issues with their own hardware. Even Microsoft’s current TV campaign of “I suggested X feature” tells that they do listen to feedback.

But, don’t believe all the hype. Many of the features in Windows 7 where, in fact, in Vista. I got worked up the other night (read: Yelled at the TV again), when I listened to a commercial talk about how Windows 7 has new child monitoring and the actor talked about how he had suggested it. That feature has been in Windows Vista since the beginning.

Make your own decisions based on what you think is right. The NSA doesn’t just work on Windows, they work on Linux and Unix too…
Justin