It's official: IBM sells PC business to Chinese company

US State Department bans Lenovo "THE US State Department has suddenly decided that the Chinese PC maker Lenovo which is making the same gear in the same places as IBM is now a major security threat." http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31819

"We are confident in the security of our manufacturing process and our business processes with the federal government," Lenovo spokeswoman Carol Makovich said. "We know that our computers present no security risk to the US government because we do not install back-doors or surveillance tools in our computers," she told AFP. http://www.physorg.com/news67185357.html

"A third key?! But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders." http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/5263/1.html "The European Parliament reports have sparked Continent-wide anger. Questions have been raised by officials in Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Holland, while the Swedish government has launched an investigation into whether Swedish companies have been victims of covert NSA surveillance. In Italy, a Rome deputy district attorney has opened an inquiry to determine whether NSA activities violate Italian privacy law. More important, perhaps, the reports encouraged France and Germany to lift their restrictions on the use and sale of strong encryption software, which Washington has been trying to limit." http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/1999-Se... "Germany's Bundiswehr is banning Microsoft software (and presumably other major American software packages) from use in critical environments due to concern over "back doors" suspected to have been placed for the use of U.S. spy agencies, particularly the NSA (National Security Agency). China, last year, declared Linux, particularly the home grown Red Flag Linux, the official operating system for Chinese government and commerce due to similar security fears." http://www.aaxnet.com/news/M010318.html

"The French government weighed in with a charge that the NSA was using its technology to spy on EU companies in order to pass their secrets to American competitors. A German parliamentarian claimed the spying cost EU businesses $20 billion in lost contracts." http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/nsa_dirty_laundry.html