Leaked documents lay bare TPM 2.0 worries
John E. Dunn
Techworld
22 August 2013
The German Government is now deeply suspicious that the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology built into a growing number of Windows 8 PCs and tablets is creating a gigantic back door for NSA surveillance, leaked documents have suggested.
Documents from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs obtained by German title Zeit Online uncover the alleged unease of officials at the direction of version 2.0 of the standard being developed under the auspices of the multi-vendor Trusted Computing Group (TCG)…
…Is the story overblown Teutonic paranoia or a valid concern about the growing power of state surveillance? Until recently, the presumption might have been to the former but the Snowden affair changed the dimensions of the debate.
The NSA has if not the capability then certainly the ambition to eavesdrop on every communication event on the Internet, and the willingness of large US firm to go along with that, or not, has generated huge controversy. Meanwhile, allegations that Microsoft has co-operated with the NSA to bypass the encryption used in some of its services are a matter of public record…
The complete article is at Techworld.
Related: U.S. spy agency edges into the light after Snowden revelations
(Reuters) – There was a time when the U.S. National Security Agency was so secretive that government officials dared not speak its name in public. NSA, the joke went, stood for “No Such Agency.”
That same agency this month held an on-the-record conference call with reporters, issued a lengthy press release to rebut a newspaper story, and posted documents on a newly launched open website – icontherecord.tumblr.com (which stands for intelligence community on the record).
The steps were taken under pressure as President Barack Obama’s administration tries to calm a public storm over disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the surveillance agency and its British counterpart scoop up far more Internet and phone data than previously known…
U.S. spy agency bugged U.N. headquarters: Germany’s Spiegel
The U.S. National Security Agency has bugged the United Nations’ New York headquarters, Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly said on Sunday in a report on U.S. spying that could further strain relations between Washington and its allies…
