Just a couple of weeks back China banned Windows 8 operating system from being used on any government computers and if that wasn’t enough, a new report on state-backed news agency has branded Windows 8 as a threat to national security suggesting that the latest operating system is being used to spy on Chinese citizens.
According to the report on CCTV, the closed nature of Windows 8 is to be blamed for this branding. Prof Yang Min of Fudan University, in an interview with CCTV, stated “Microsoft would no longer open its Windows 8 source code to the Chinese government”.
Min went onto add that despite this, the security mechanism of the operating system is such that it provides Microsoft with access to user details, which is a big challenge for China.
The report also cites a statement from Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering added “Your identity, account, contact book, phone numbers, all this data put together can be used for big data analysis. This analysis could be more accurate than our official statistics”.
Guangnan claimed that National Security Agency (NSA) US is using Windows 8 to spy on Chinese citizens and that the personal information of users “might be a good way for the US to monitor other countries”.
After the initial ban on Windows 8, Microsoft has been busy trying to convince the government into reversing the ban, but things are not looking good considering that the government is already busy developing a Windows replacement that is both homegrown and secure.
Earlier the Chinese government said that by banning Windows 8 it is trying to “avoid the awkwardness of being confronted with a similar situation again in future if it continues to purchase computers with [a] foreign OS.”
The new Windows alternative will be based on Linux and companies like China Standard Software Co. and NFS China are already banking big time on the new OS initiative.
