-Caveat Lector- Resource Center for Freedom of Mind Confidential Mailing List - http://www.freedomofmind.com Scientology Company Linked to Windows 2000? Source: http://www.heise.de/ct/english/99/25/058/ Windows 2000 in Danger of being Banned Scientology participation Criticized by Church Representatives An integrated component of Windows 2000 is made by a Scientology company. The connection between the psycho sect and the software giant is annoying representatives of the major churches in Germany. Microsoft risks a boycott of its flagship product by churches and government agencies. Windows 2000, the successor of Windows NT shipping in February, contains a defragmentation program called Diskeeper. The manufacturer is the company Executive Software Inc. (http://www.execsoft.com/) of the professed scientologist Craig Jensen. Founded in 1981 the enterprise offers defragmentation and data storage tools to "enhance the speed and performance of Microsoft Windows NT". Executive chief Jensen himself shares his biography on his homepage. According to that he has been a member of the organization calling itself church since 1974 and supposedly transformed his company from a "one-man show to a flourishing multi-million Dollar corporation" with the help of the scripts of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Jensen also climbed the corporate ladder at Scientology: He is an operating Thetan at level VIII (OT VIII), the highest level scientologists can achieve currently. In 1992 the Californian company opened an office in Hamburg. Staff was hired according to the following criteria: "Fully trained scientologists, computer skills desirable but not a prerequisite". By integrating the Executive product into Windows 2000 Microsoft created a situation that at least a few large potential customers see as a serious problem. A employee of the German catholic church who did not want his name mentioned told c't that the origin of the software is "highly disturbing". It is "a genius move" of the Scientology organization if soon such a program that has direct and active access to all data is working principally on every company desk and in government and church institutions as an integrated part of a widely used operating system. Espionage suspected The underlying reason for these kinds of worries is the philosophy of the Scientology umbrella organization WISE, Executive being a member of the latter. WISE stands for World Institute of Scientology Enterprises and forms the "most important money-generating apparatus of the psycho sect" according to the German news magazine Focus. Up to 15 percent of the revenues are paid to Scientology. The participating companies are "exclusively managed with LRH technology" describes WISE itself; LRH are the initials of Hubbard. Guideline 1 of WISE says to "utilize the administrative technology in every business of the world". WISE further demands: "Conquer the key positions, the position [...] as companies' director of human resources, [...] as secretary of the director, [...]. The manufacturing plants, the trade centers, the counties, these are the places where we want trained scientologists." At the end of August the Bavarian secretary of state Hermann Regensburger pointed out that Scientology wants to extend the administration technologies in its enterprises, resulting in a total control of the employees, to government and society as well. Scientology engages espionage to systematically gather information about enemies and uses psychological intimidation. For this the organization is operating its own secret service called Office for Special Affairs (OSA). In almost every German province the Scientology organization is under observation of the department for protection of the constitution. This year's constitution protection report of the province of Baden-Württemberg says that Scientology gathered information about federal and state politicians. Six years ago Scientology hired a private detective agency for a member of the German parliament belonging to the CDU (Christian Democratic Union, one of the major political parties in Germany) who had publicly criticized the organization in a discussion on broadcast television. Four weeks later his personal life was investigated intensely and the results were sent to the Scientology secret service in Munich. According to the Stuttgarter Nachrichten (German newspaper) strictly confidential material of the State Department ended up in the OSA headquarter in Los Angeles. At the end of 1997 the Foreign Office had created an internal strategy paper that investigated "Scientology Under the Aspect of German-American Relations". The State Department brought in the Federal Intelligence Agency to identify the mole. So far without any success. No subject for Microsoft Data protection and security officials who looked into the subject are concerned that of all enterprises the software of a Scientology company would have access to all data under Windows 2000. However, Microsoft cannot relate to these concerns. There is no such distrust against Scientology organizations in the US said the German media relations department of Microsoft. It was on the contrary quite difficult to make the mother company in Redmond understand this German problem. In a letter to a German government department expressing concern the Microsoft subsidiary writes: "Inquiries at our mother company in the US did not indicate in any way that this software restricts the security of the operating system. However, it is not a Microsoft-specific problem if - assuming appropriate criminal energy - somebody can obtain access to the system." After all, the customer could uninstall the defragmentation tool at any time by manually deleting the files and registry entries (see below "In the Background"). In Germany the software enterprise takes the same line as in the US: "Microsoft acts according to the principles of rule of law", said company spokesman Kurt Braatz to c't. "Without a valid ruling of a judge we cannot exclude anybody from doing business with us because of his religion, race or other characteristics". The company Executive must be treated like any other company despite its connections to Scientology. There is no valid verdict that classifies Scientology as an anti-constitutional organization. Stating protection? Churches, government departments and the large political parties in Germany want to distance themselves from the power-hungry psycho sect. It is more and more the practice to demand a protection statement from employees, members and business partners. With this the signing party commits to "completely" reject Hubbard methods, not to organize or allow any Scientology seminars in the company, not to do any business with persons, companies or organizations that support Scientology and - important in Microsoft's case - not "knowingly support companies that are managed or influenced with a L. Ron Hubbard method". Meanwhile the protection statement has become a deciding criterion for employment in many government institutions and is slowly gaining ground in the economy as well. Assuming that the Scientology company Executive is earning royalties from Windows 2000 everybody who signed the statement could not buy the operating system. On top of that as a potential business partner Microsoft Germany will have to confront joining the protection statement. This will quite probably be the subject of a meeting on December 9th when representatives of the Catholic church visit the German office of Microsoft. As company spokesman Braatz said to c't, he will be happy to explain Microsoft's position. Changing it is out of the question, however. The argument that especially the churches should not be expected to finance the Scientology enterprise when buying Windows 2000 does not get any response from Microsoft. "Whoever has these concerns is free to express themselves by their bying decisions", said Braatz. In the USA Scientology has the support of influential politicians, mostly Republicans, who want to see the constitutional right of free choice of religion applied to the so-called church. German politicians still remember the unpleasant experience when the loudest critics from this camp accused them of oppressing a religious minority and even made comparisons to the Nazi regime. Since then it has been very quiet around the report from the parliament's survey commission presented in spring that was the reason for the angry criticism. Under these circumstances it seems more than questionable whether Microsoft can be persuaded to reassess the matter. The attitude in Redmond might only change if they see the risk of a noticeable boycott in the German market. At least the outline of such a risk is quite real. Sources at the Catholic church said to c't that if Microsoft still is not going to do anything to clarify this matter they would have to conclude that "the advice is not to use the Windows operating system or only for limited purposes". (ct) Literature [1] Axel Kintzinger, Brisante Übernahme, Sekten-Firmen dringen ins Computergeschäft vor und gewinnen auch namhafte Kunden, Focus 14/1999, S. 80 [2] Renate Hartwig, Executive Software weiterhin im Gespräch, Kein Informationsfluss in der Computerbranche, Robin Direkt Report, 01. 02. 98 [3] Bayerisches Staatsministerium des Innern, Das System Scientology, Wie Scientology funktioniert, 25 Fragen mit Antworten [4] Renate Hartwig, Scientology - die Zeitbombe in der Wirtschaft, 1994 [5] Bayerisches Staatsministerium des Innern, Jürgen Keltsch, Was ist Scientology?, Die Fabrikation der Mensch-Maschine im kybernetischen Lernlabor, 04. 08. 1999 [6] "Ist das Menschen- und Gesellschaftsbild der Scientology-Organisation vereinbar mit der Werte- und Rechtsordnung des Grundgesetzes?", Gutachtliche Stellungnahme im Auftrag der Ministerpräsidentin des Landes Schleswig-Holstein, Informations- und Dokumentationsstelle "Sekten und sektenähnliche Vereinigungen", Prof. Dr. jur. Ralf B. Abel, April 1996 --------------------------------------------- In the Background In general defragmentation software has access to all files - otherwise it could not rearrange them on the disk. However, this is not only a characteristic of this type of software but is true for all backup programs as well, for example. From a technical point of view a device driver is much more dangerous because it has more privileges in the system and can act rather unobserved. We took a closer look at the defragmentation software in two current pre-releases of Windows 2000, Beta 3 and Release Candidate 2 (Build 2031 and 2128). The participating modules that consist of the files dfrgsnap.dll, dfrgres.dll, dfrgui.dll, dfrgfat.exe and dfrgntfs.exe did not reveal anything suspicious. The files contain the usual function calls, for example from GetProcAddress, LoadLibrary and COM. Especially COM makes almost anything possible theoretically. Observing the programs while they were running did not offer any hints either, like for example calling network functions to transmit data to the outside. Neither listdll [1] nor iwatch [2] came up with any peculiarities in form of additionally loaded DLLs that are not necessary for defragmentation but would be for network access for example. Of course an external investigation does not completely invalidate the suspicion that an operating system component spies on the user. A Trojan horse is comparable to a bug in software: One can practically never say with absolute certainty that there are no bugs; instead it is pure luck to find one. The most interesting question is actually whether Microsoft has the source code of the component bought from Executive. If this is the case Microsoft could definitely find out whether the software is dangerous. The symbol information (PDB/DBG files, Checked Builds) for Windows 2000 provided by Microsoft suggest that the Diskeeper source codes are part of the regular build process and thus are available. However, Microsoft has not confirmed this yet. Therefore an uncertainty remains though it is relativized by the way of integration into Windows 2000: The defragmentation only runs by request of the administrator or user. Additionally there are two alternatives, among others at [1]. But even there the source code is currently missing. Microsoft's advice to simply delete the defragmentation software if in doubt borders on deceit. Following that advice in the current pre-releases activates a component called System File Protection (SFP). It immediately restores the files in question as soon as they have vanished from the Explorer by using a cached copy. Literature [1] Web-Site of Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell containing several tips, informations and programs for Windows 9x and NT: http://www.sysinternals.com [2] Matthias Withopf, Wachtmeister, Programme unter Windows 95/NT überwacht ausführen, c't 14/98, S. 200 Verlag Heinz Heise Additional Translations from c't are available Last changed by Jürgen Kuri, December 04, 1999 --------------------------------------------- What Scientology Doesn't Want Anyone to See: http://www.xenu.net http://www.xenutv.com ------------------------------------ Forgive me for the unwanted advertisements. We will take steps. I have just returned from Clearwater Florida, where I gave a talk for the newly formed Lisa McPherson Trust. The entire conference will be placed on www.xenutv.com soon. In, by chance you don't know about the impending criminal and civil trials surrounding the unfortunate death Of Lisa, please look at www.lisamcpherson.org. When I returned to my office in Somerville, I learned that I was picketed (as were other conference participants) with fliers and copies of Freedom magazines distributed- accusing me of being a hate criminal. You would think that the Scientologist leadership would know better! Its been some 23 years of criticizing them- being harassed, sued, threatened- why would this stop me from exercising my rights? It was a very powerful emotional experience for me to be with relatives of Lisa's, hear the latest news about the legal battle, and meet so many former top executives of Scientology who are willing to help expose the truth about this cult. It was a tearful event. Former Clearwater mayor, Gabe Cazares spoke, and was reminded of his incredible courage in standing up to this cult for more than 20 years. The Lisa McPherson Trust is setting up an office in Clearwater and is determined to help members of Scientology to realize the truth about this group. We must all stand up and be counted- NOW! We must or risk losing our basic human rights! Steve We are about to go on a Journey. All Aboard http://sites.netscape.net/gsussnzl/poleshift DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
