At 12:26 PM -0800 2/19/00, John Young wrote:
>A French intelligence report alleges that Microsoft was
>set up with NSA funding and that NSA imposed MS-DOS
>on IBM, and also alleges that NSA agents are now working
>at Microsoft:
>
> http://cryptome.org/nsa-ms-spy.htm
>
>The full confidential report has not been published and these
>allegations are made by an intelligence newsletter which
>claims to have seen it. The Age, an Australian newspaper,
>has reported on the topic today -- that account leads the file
>above.
>
>The NSA MS key revelation appears in the reports, and may
>have prompted the intelligence investigation and speculation,
>along with the April 1999 report for Europarl, due to be considered
>by EuroParl in a week, which also warns of Microsoft's and Intel's
>possible cooperation with US intelligence to use Winte as a spying
>tool.
>
>Still, we had not before seen an allegation that NSA was in on
>the gitgo with Microsoft and that DOS had been forced upon
>IBM. Is that old news or new, or merely a French counterattack
>on Echelon-like espionage?
It's probably a boullaibaise (sp?) of paranoid conspiracy theory,
journalistic sensationalism, piling on, French nationalism, and a desire to
distract attention away from French industrial espionage. (Recall the
confirmed report that Air France was bugging commercial travellers.)
PC-DOS was so primitive in 1980, when IBM's Boca Raton division--itself a
backwater, led by Phil "Don" Estridge--that it is inconceivable that it had
any "spying" hooks built in. I mean, come on! Besides which, it was written
initially by Tim Patterson, of Seattle Computer, and only bought hastily by
MS when it looked like they would get the IBM contract. (So the French
paranoids would claim that Tim Patterson was operating his little company
in Seattle with the intent of selling his spy software to MS. Get real.)
PC-DOS, later MS-DOS, was also small enough in those days that nearly every
function could be analyzed in detail, and the code could be dissected.
Ditto for the chips. I worked for Intel during that period when this
supposed NSA "Operation Wintel" was being developed, and I can assure you
that the chips of the day had no particular features of interest to the
NSA, save for some of the well-known bit twiddling instructions wmight
otherwise have been. (But a lot less well-suited than it _could_ have been.)
Most compellingly, until fairly recently the Net was primarily run off of
Sun and similar computers...we all know that, of course. Sniffers on Sun
networks would have been more interesting (and there's anecdotal evidence
that a certain San Diegan developed precisely those tools for the NSA).
Arghh..where to continue? Consider that at least several other
manufacturers of Intel-compatible chips exist. AMD, obviously. But also
Cyrix/National/Via, and Texas Instruments, and IBM. Did all of them design
in the "special NSA sections"? Without any of them talking?
(And these are only the recent deals. In the past, Matra/Harris, a
French-affiliated company, was a producer. Ditto for a bunch of others,
American, European, and Asian. All of them in on the conspiracy?)
As a paranoid theory, it's not even interesting.
--Tim May
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
