Geodog

The National Security State, powered by Microsoft Technology

In preparing for tomorrow's Berkeley Digital Rights Management conference, I've run across some scary stuff. The scariest is probably this:
Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer

Overview
The Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer is a way that Windows users can view files with restricted permission. These restrictions help people to prevent sensitive documents, Web-based information, and e-mail messages from being forwarded, edited, or copied by unauthorized individuals.

Document authors, Web site authors, and creators of Web-based applications can deliver protected information by restricting permission. This provides protection, not only while the information is in transit, but also after the recipient of the information has received it.

How It Works
Authors can set restricted permission to limit what a reader can do with the content they receive. These restrictions are customizable, that is, one person may view the document but not print it, another may do both, and a third person may view and print the document, but only for five days

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Availability
This software is not yet available. When it is available you will be able to download it from this page.

Doesn't this start to sound like an Orwellian/Ashcroftian state? Just imagine if Ari Fleischer could make disappear after 5 days the widely shown video of the White House Press corps laughing him out ot the room for trying to pretend that that Bush wasn't trying to buy Security Council votes on Iraq. Or Fleischer's "Americans ... need to watch what they say" comment which he tried to erase from the White House Transcript. Words of limited duration for limited use. Sounds like the National Security State to me. And powered by Microsoft Technology. How convenient.

See also the part of the DOJ consent decree that Brett Glass pointed the IP list to, which states:

No provision of this Final Judgment shall:

1. Require Microsoft to document, disclose or license to third parties: (a) portions of APIs or Documentation or portions or layers of Communications Protocols the disclosure of which would compromise the security of a particular installation or group of installations of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication systems, including without limitation, keys, authorization tokens or enforcement criteria....

Fits together rather nicely, doesn't it. Some nice closed API's and file formats, which can't be revealed to others for reasons of National Security. As I said, I am finding developments in this area fairly scary. It will be interesting to see how people at tomorrow's conference react to Microsoft's announcement that DRM will be build into Windows 2003 server, the next version of Office, and the next version of IE.