How NSA access was built into Windows

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 18 January 2007 12:01, Ric Moore wrote:
>On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 09:54 -0700, Craig White wrote:
>> On Tue, 2007-01-16 at 22:27 -0500, Ric Moore wrote:
>> > On Tue, 2007-01-16 at 01:10 -0500, Claude Jones wrote:
>> > > On Tue January 16 2007 12:49 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote:
>> > > > Selinux=0 may completely evacuate all selinux code from the boot
>> > > > process.  Then, on the other hand, it may not.
>> > >
>> > > Maybe you guys are thinking about this all wrong. Suppose that
>> > > Selinux is really a diversion. By forcing the question of
>> > > mandatory access controls at the kernel level, there's a team of
>> > > specialists being trained who are mastering in great depth, the
>> > > detailed minutiae of how each daemon they program for, functions
>> > > at the lowest levels. The goal is to create the specialist team
>> > > that knows every hook, every detail, of low level operations of
>> > > all major sofware running in the OS.
>> > >
>> > > Maybe I'm smoking too many cigars...
>> >
>> > Maybe it's Beagle? <evil cackles> That damn thing is a mystery to
>> > everyone on this list. Yet, it's still alive! Go figure. Ric
>>
>> ----
>> just in case it isn't obvious - the point of beagle is to provide a
>> ready in-depth searchable index of all text that has passed your way,
>> be it via e-mail, documents or web. It's ambitious, imperfect but a
>> dfe (damn fine effort).
>
>Exactly! That's my point. If someone did have some way to enter my
>machine, beagle would be the perfect 'snitch' on everything one has ever
>done, written, visited, dnloaded and logged. All in one swell foop.
>According to 'top', it's pretty aggressive in getting it's job done. I
>was just providing some humor to the SElinux issue by pointing it out,
>as an alternative or addition to the "conspiracy" theories. :) Ric

All well and good, if we all buy into this "big brotherism" scenario.

For any utility to remain running on my system, it must prove its worth to 
me.

In about a month of screwing around with it here, I did not succeed in 
getting it to show me a single character of output, either from the cli, 
or the one lonely kerry beagle entry in the kde menu's.  As it was a 
considerable resource hog, I nuked it and 2 other deps with yum.  But you 
can go back in this lists archives and find where I asked what it did, 
without ever getting a meaningfull answer. 2 maybe 3 times.

Frankly, said To TPTB, we do not need any such 'easter eggs' in our 
software without a discussion as to the benefits and costs.

With the obvious costs associated with running it, and no visible benefit 
to this user, hell it didn't even have a man page, can you (Rahul=TPTB) 
present a valid argument that I should reinstall it?  I don't like secret 
software, I don't trust secret software, and if I have any control over 
it, I'm not running any secret software.

So justify it, give us manpages, or don't make it part of a default 
install.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.