[Fsfe-france] [Fwd: Microsoft Offers Companies New Ways to Keep Secrets]

[pplf]

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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