svh...@gmail.com wrote:
http://mashable.com/2017/05/10/microsoft-ceo-dystopian-future
How many believes microsoft?
There's no reason to believe any software proprietor that they're looking
out for user's interests. Nor is there any reason to single out Microsoft
as being anything but an example of a deeper underlying problem.
One of the stories that inadvertently highlights this concept is the story
about the time Microsoft got caught distributing inoperative so-called
"privacy" controls[1]. The story doesn't reach the conclusions I list below
(I don't believe Condé Nast is structured such that it could publish such
conclusions from their own authors. The message "all computer users deserve
software freedom" is anathema to most business IT publications these days
because the business IT press are wedded to the "open source" philosophy
which sees proprietary software as being just as worthwhile as any other
kind of software).
But clearly it didn't matter what those settings were set to (nor did it
matter if one used a particular kind of controls to change the so-called
"privacy" settings -- GUI, registry setting, or something else), network
traffic analysis showed that the settings didn't change the fact that data
left the computer to go to Microsoft. Anyone who knows anything about
programming could have told you this, but real-world examples help do away
with the need to deal with "tinfoil hat" dismissals or explaining
foreseeable consequences from a programmer's point of view.
I find this story particularly poignant because it shows that:
- any proprietor can exfiltrate data with any program, whether on-purpose
or by accident.
- that the software is non-free means it doesn't matter whether this was
done on-purpose or by accident because either way the user can't do
anything about it except stop running Windows.
- the UI details are irrelevant. No matter how they're labeled, no matter
if they're accessible to non-technical users (GUI controls) or not
(registry settings) doesn't matter because the exfiltration always occured.
- we need security scanning on all software but the only way to get
software that respects the user's wishes is running nothing but free software.
[1]
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/
