Lenovo is just copying their betters at the NSA: Infect the machines of others and when caught, deny it. Sadly, this business model will probably work for them.
Most Americans are apathetic. Of those of us not apathetic, those opposed to the widespread espionage of the three letter agencies are in the minority.
It's been heartbreaking watching the American reputation decline worldwide while also watching the inverse rise of the amoral and unrepentant technocrat here in America. It's a Golden Age for technology and a Dark Age for culture.
Most Americans probably have no idea what the NSA is, even now. I'm sure most of my college friends who weren't computer science majors couldn't say what it was or what it did.
Soviet citizens probably knew more about what was going on than Americans do now.
Many Americans are uninformed and many are apathetic. But Thucydides said the same thing about Athenians. I don't believe it's as simple as blaming American citizens.
Americans get information about the world through substandard education, uninvestigated journalism and high-fructose entertainment. The reporting on American policy outside America is far better than the reporting on it inside the country. Yes, Americans inherit this government, but as long as America is a superpower, so does the rest of the world.
I don't know what's more disturbing: the fact that US government does this with impunity or the fact that a sizable group of technically competent citizens defends it.
I think the "sizable group of technically competent citizens" realizes that espionage between nation-states is as old as nation-states themselves, and that because of the nature of humanity, it's not going away anytime soon.
I'm for it when it doesn't target only US tech like we see here... that harms trade. I'm an American and thus I benefit... plus I think the skills are awesome (to me the tapping optical fiber without cutting it off is more impressive, however).
The attack is just like any other malware attack at that point, which everyone will always need to defend better against. If anything this creates a better challenge for SV & tech in general to react to. Apple already has responded and is making it harder to intercept which is good for everyone in the long-run.
The US might just be the first ones discovered with it, but to think that no one else will also figure it out (nation-state or not) is very unlikely. Internet + digitized everything makes our current paradigm vulnerable unless everything starts getting more secure.
"Everyone" has had an certificate issue at one point or another, Microsoft, Google. Apple, and if tech' firms get it wrong then what chance does anyone else have?
This is a good place for this, one of my favorite quotes from the century before last:
"Next in importance to personal freedom is immunity from suspicions, and jealous observation. Men may be without restraints upon their liberty: they may pass to and fro at pleasure: but if their steps are tracked by spies and informers, their words noted down for crimination, their associates watched as conspirators, who shall say that they are free? Nothing is more revolting to Englishmen than the espionage which forms part of the administrative system of continental despotisms. It haunts men like an evil genius, chills their gaiety, restrains their wit, casts a shadow over their friendships, and blights their domestic hearth."
The freedom of a country may be measured by its immunity from this baleful agency. Rulers who distrust their own people, must govern in a spirit of absolutism; and suspected subjects will be ever sensible of their bondage."
The Constitutional History Of England Vol II(1863), pg. 288 [0]
This is a great quote, and really relevant to the issue at hand.
We're technically free to roam about and talk to whoever we want, but our steps are tracked (obsessively) and our communications are kept on the record (indefinitely).
By the logic of this quote, the US is not a free country. I tend to agree.
"The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative." -Goebbels
What a pantload. This order is about DHS "legally" having access to corporate data instead of the usual method of tapping network pipes while also protecting those corporations from lawsuits.
