“Former NSA (National Security Agency) analyst and
representative of Internet rights watchdog EPIC (Electronic Privacy
Information Centre) Wayne Madison warned privacy groups Friday that
a growing number of proprietary commercial software applications
may have backdoors allowing the security services to carry out
surveillance activities.”
“Speaking to privacy groups as well as cryptography and security
experts at the International Forum on Surveillance by Design at the
London School of Economics, Madison warned that this is an area of
growing interest for security services such as the NSA. “A lot
of manufacturers play ball with the NSA,” said Madison. “This is an
area that the NSA is moving into a lot and we have to be really
careful about it….“
“Open source software, which publishes the underlying source
code with a finished application, is by contrast entirely
transparent. This has caused some foreign governments including the
French administration to take an interest in open source
solutions.”