COFEE, principle, and PR

[Parity <pty.err () gmail com>]

I remember back in early 2001, as the ship date for Windows XP was
approaching, Brian Valentine (the vice president in charge of Windows at the
time) was holding forth at one of the regular Windows Team "integration
meetings" (aka, Building 26 cafeteria beer soaks).

Valentine was warning the assembled crowd of coders and lab rats such as
myself not to speak to the press about the upcoming product.  See, the trade
press had been dog-piling on Windows XP, casting aspersions at its
integration with Passport, and kicking up all sorts of dust.  The story was
all about how XP was actually a Trojan horse with which Microsoft would
invade your privacy, monitor your use of the internet, report everything
back to the mothership, etc., etc.

And I remember all too well how I had to constantly reassure my friends and
family that, no, XP would do nothing of the sort, trust me, I'd know all
about it if it was really like that, honest, etc.  Not that it did any good.

 Anyway, Brian Valentine was saying, "Listen everyone, you're the Windows
team, and nobody else in the world gets to tell you how to build Windows.  Not
even the PR department – you do your jobs, and let them do theirs.  We don't
pay them to write code."

I remember wondering, "Really?  What the fuck *do* we pay them for, Brian?"
'cause when your employees are constantly having to reassure their own moms
that the company they work for is *really really not *spying on them, well,
you might not be getting the level of professional PR service you're paying
for.

I mention this because it looks like the student-government also-rans who
service the Microsoft account at Wag-Ed
<http://www.waggeneredstrom.com/>haven't gotten any savvier in recent
years.

If I was on the BitLocker <http://www.bitlocker.com/> team today, I'd feel
utterly betrayed, as if all the recognition and respect for which I work had
just been pissed away by Microsoft's spectacularly inept sense of PR.

No, 
COFEE<http://www.portal.itproportal.com/articles/2008/04/30/microsofts-device-provides-backdoor-access-vista-and-others/>is
not a back door, but it's still a total betrayal of principal.
You can't credibly champion Security and Privacy and the Four Sacred Pillars
of Trustworthy Computing one the one hand and dole out gratis forensic
toolkits to the feds with the other.  *Duh.*

Somebody needs to get a 2.5 for this one.  Really.  Or else it'll just go to
show that there isn't a tattered rag of performance accountability left at
Microsoft.

If I still worked there, I'd be ashamed and embarrassed.

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