By Gregg Keizer
November 19, 2009 03:07 PM ET
Microsoft today denied that it has built a backdoor into Windows 7, a concern that surfaced yesterday after a senior National Security Agency (NSA) official testified before Congress that the agency had worked on the operating system.
"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company spokeswoman said, reacting to a Computerworld story Wednesday. On Monday, Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, told the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that the agency had partnered with the developer during the creation of Windows 7 "to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide."
Echoing earlier concerns, Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronics Privacy Information Center (EPIC), questioned the wisdom of letting the NSA participate in OS development. "The key problem is that NSA has a dual mission, COMPUSEC, computer security, now called cyber security, and SIGINT, signals intelligence, in other words surveillance," Rotenberg said in an e-mail.
Yesterday, he raised the issue, which isn't new, of whether the NSA pressures companies like Microsoft to craft so-called "backdoors" into their code that would let the agency track users and intercept users' communications. Rotenberg called it an "obvious concern," and added that it might be difficult for major software makers to turn down NSA "suggestions" because the U.S. federal government is an important customer.
ComputerWorld
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