Vista Encryption Concerns British Police

Vista Encryption Concerns British Police

British officials are concerned about encryption in Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista release, saying the technology could prevent law enforcement from reading suspects’ computer files. They claim certain new features within Vista, while intended to do good, may actually set back terrorism investigations.

Vista will come with a feature called BitLocker, which enables users to encrypt all the data on a system including the OS and boot sector. The idea is to keep data on stolen laptops from being accessed, but it also means it will become “seriously difficult” to read encrypted information off the hard disk, says Anderson.

He suggested that the British government talk with Microsoft and computer vendors assure that there is some type of “backdoor key” in order to allow law enforcement access.

Wow…just wow. Lets look at this idea for a second. You want a backdoor in every copy of the operating system that will bypass the built in security encryption so that you can access the information of maybe 1% of rogue “terrorist” users? Gee, that makes plenty of sense.

This “War on Terror” is starting to go way too far. Perhaps I am alone on this one, but I’d rather maintain just a little bit of my freedom and privacy even if it means that terrorists might occassional do some horrible things. That doesn’t mean I support terrorism or support helping them, it means I like my freedom and it shouldn’t not be taken away to possibly maybe hopefully (sarcasm) prevent something that in all likelihood is going to happen anyways because our security services are inept as they have demonstrated so many times before.

This is not even bringing up the point that if the goverment gets there magic backdoor into the operating system what is stopping virus writers and blackhat hackers from using the exact same backdoor to cause all kinds of havoc to your computer. Other points of interest: OSX has been using disk encryption for several years now. Why has no one complained to them about the need of a secret backdoor key for that? Also, it’s not like disk encryption is a new technology my friends. There has been software available for a few years now that can do this relatively easy, but suddenly when Microsoft is going to include a very useful security feature into it’s operating system people start to scream bloody murder. Oh yeah, THE FEATURE WON’T EVEN BE ON BY DEFAULT. So Chill. I am sorry my British friends, but that request is ridiculous and unacceptable.