Trespassing Allowed

Just over a week ago the BBC posted an article with a warning from the Department of Homeland Security. It didn't concern liquids or airplanes, nor did it concern harbors and containers or other unlikely terrorist plots. It concerned Microsoft Windows. The Department of Homeland Security issued an official warning on Windows bugs and "urged Windows users to install the latest patches from Microsoft as quickly as possible." Everybody knows or should know that Microsoft Windows Software is notoriously insecure but that this is a matter of Homeland Security must be somewhat of a surprise to even the most dedicated followers of the Redmond Robbers.

It raises some questions. About the software, obviously, but I'll refrain from ranting and raving about that for the moment because there are more interesting issues. For instance why the Department of Homeland Security does not advise the public to replace this evidently dangerous product with a better and safer one. They have done so themselves, as has the army, the navy and the intelligence community at large, who are all running some GNU/Linux distribution or another. Could it be that the Department of Homeland Security actually likes something around 90% of the western population to use and depend on this bit of technology? Could it be that the closed (proprietary) nature of this product allows for virtual surveillance devices? Some sort of Government Approved Spyware?
Now, don't run off screaming about paranoid delusions. It is not beyond living memory that there was an FBI, a CIA and No Such Agency. The unveiled National Security Agency's call database, the unwarranted, illegal eavesdropping by BushCo which surfaced about a year back was an outlandish conspiracy theory just a decade earlier.
Mind you, it's just Joe Random's desktop where Windows still has an excessive dominant marketshare, and recent events have established that Joe Random is to be suspected, needs to be monitored and tracked. A suggestion that the Department of Homeland Security, or the NSA, or one of DARPA's children would tap into each and every homecomputer was farfetched to say the least not to long ago, but given the current state of affairs, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Windows is allowed to lie about it if it were true and the closed nature of the software doesn't allow for peer review.
Rumor has it that early next year Microsoft's new Vista will finally be released, after being made compatible with the systems used by the various intelligence gathering bodies, which took a little longer then expected. It stands for Very Insecure Software, Trespassing Allowed. And once in a while the Department of Homeland Security will remind us to update the drivers of our Personal Surveillance Devices "as quickly as possible".