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[Fsfe-france] [Fwd: Microsoft Offers Companies New Ways to Keep Secrets]
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pplf |
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[Fsfe-france] [Fwd: Microsoft Offers Companies New Ways to Keep Secrets] |
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Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:59:27 +0100 |
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Le DRM à toutes les sauces dans le nouveau Windows 2003... :-(
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Microsoft Offers Companies New Ways to Keep Secrets
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 18:28:10 -0500
From: R. A. Hettinga <address@hidden>
To: Clippable <address@hidden>
CC: address@hidden
"We're from Microsoft, and..."
--------
Cheers,
RAH
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB1046036499817775743,00.html
February 24, 2003
Microsoft Offers Companies
New Ways to Keep Secrets
By DON CLARK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Microsoft Corp. wants to help companies control access to sensitive
documents. But the idea might not be welcome to corporate watchdogs.
The Redmond, Wash., software company Friday described new technology
that can be used to create programs that can enforce a range of policies
against unauthorized disclosure of information. Among other things,
companies or government agencies could set restrictions on what
documents or text could be copied, forwarded in e-mail, printed or
viewed as Web pages.
Microsoft's technology, called Windows Rights Management Services, will
use a forthcoming operating system called Windows Server 2003 and be
included in a version of the Office suite of desktop programs, due in
the second half of the year. The company plans to distribute tools in
the second quarter to help other software developers update their
products to add the security features.
Microsoft officials said the technology was prompted by customers who
worry about the ease with which employees can leak sensitive material
such as business plans, new product specifications or classified
information.
"The benefit of the Internet is faster communication with authorized
people," said Mike Nash, corporate vice president in Microsoft's
security business unit. "The risk is accidental or deliberate disclosure
of data that is company-confidential."
The technology can effectively revoke the ability of employees to view
documents, even after they have been transferred outside a company. That
feature would work by requiring recipients of a sensitive file to log on
to a server at regular intervals to renew rights to access it. If they
are fired or resign from a company, they could no longer renew those
rights, which would expire.
Some public-policy groups aren't enthusiastic. They argue that the
technology could make it harder for employees to provide evidence of
corporate wrongdoing to journalists or government regulators.
"It's clear that corporations might see it as valuable," said Seth
Schoen, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
civil-liberties group based in San Francisco. "It's not necessarily
clear that it would be good for the public."
An employee, for example, might be ordered to do something illegal in an
e-mail that effectively self-destructs. "If the person doesn't do the
thing, he can be fired," Mr. Schoen said. "If he wants to prove the boss
had asked him to do something illegal, there is no record of it."
Companies clearly have the legal right to control access to their
information and computer networks, just as they might limit how
employees use photocopying machines, Mr. Nash said. Microsoft is just
trying to give them better tools to do so, he said.
It is not the only one. Liquid Machines, a start-up in Lexington, Mass.,
last week demonstrated its own software for controlling access to
documents that it expects to deliver at the end of May. While
Microsoft's plans require customers to install new versions of
application programs, Liquid Machines' technology can protect existing
applications, including products that aren't based on Windows, said Jim
Schoonmaker, its chief executive officer.
Most such electronic locks can be evaded. An employee could use a camera
to take a picture of a document on a screen, for example. Microsoft
could make it harder for programmers to side-step its
document-protection plan by exploiting another Microsoft-proposed
technology, originally code-named Palladium, that uses chips to wall off
portions of a computer's hard drive so some programs can't be easily
modified, Mr. Schoen of the EFF noted.
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: address@hidden>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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