The way microsoft screws its customers I'm sure they know right where the back door is.
Neat article. Interesting example of liberty vs security.
"Doesn’t including a back door in such a system defeat the entire purpose of the system?"
In a word, Yes.
I will never trust a closed-source OS's encryption. Peer-reviewed OSS all the way, baby, especially if it was written or endorsed by Philip Zimmermann or Bruce Schneier.
See the case of Crypto AG.
It may be the greatest intelligence scam of the century: For decades, the US has routinely intercepted and deciphered top secret encrypted messages of 120 countries. These nations had bought the world's most sophisticated and supposedly secure commercial encryption technology from Crypto AG, a Swiss company that staked its reputation and the security concerns of its clients on its neutrality. The purchasing nations, confident that their communications were protected, sent messages from their capitals to embassies, military missions, trade offices, and espionage dens around the world, via telex, radio, teletype, and facsimile.
...
All the while, because of a secret agreement between the National Security Agency (NSA) and Crypto AG, they might as well have been hand delivering the message to Washington. Their Crypto AG machines had been rigged so that when customers used them, the random encryption key could be automatically and clandestinely transmitted with the enciphered message. NSA analysts could read the message traffic as easily as they could the morning newspaper.
Ping
More bunk from Europe about how unfair Windows is. Why don't you stick to the somewhat worthwhile articles that tell us exactly how many Billions they're extorting this time?