BEER -- chapters 10 and 23 (possible spoilers) -- PROMIS 1.3.1

[Thomas Eckhardt]

*The back door*

Nicholas Windust continues:

"'(...) what's disturbing about this
Promis software is that there's always a backdoor built
in, so anytime it gets installed on a government computer
anywhere in the world--law enforcement, intelligence,
special ops--anybody who happens to know about this
backdoor can just slip through it and make themselves at
home--wherever--and all manner of secrets get
compromised.'" (BE 104-105)

--[Michael] Riconosciuto provided the Hamiltons with an affidavit that 
once again brought Brian into the Inslaw picture. "I engaged in some 
software development and modification work in 1983 and 1984 on 
proprietary PROMIS computer software product," he stated. "The copy of 
PROMIS on which I worked came from the US Department of Justice. Earl W. 
Brian made it available to me through Wackenhut (a security company with 
close FBI and CIA connections) (...) I performed the
modifications to PROMIS in Indio, Calif.; Silver Springs, Md.; and 
Miami, Fla." The modifications included a telecommunications "trap door" 
that would let the US Government eavesdrop on any other organization 
using the pirated software, Riconosciuto said.--

(Wired, 1993)

Michael Riconosciuto’s affidavit is available here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.activism/1L8zzAVtlrU/KsQoBWdxsxgJ

And, with a tip of the hat to Cheri Seymour, here:

http://trinedayauthors.homestead.com/Circle/6.html

A case in point would indeed be Canada:

--(...) the CIA was not the only place where illegal
versions of PROMIS cropped up. Canadian documents (held by
the House Judiciary Committee and obtained by WIRED) place
PROMIS in the hands of various Canadian government
agencies. These documents include two letters to Inslaw
from Canadian agencies requesting detailed user manuals -
even though Inslaw has never sold PROMIS to Canada.
Canadian officials now claim the letters were in error.--

(Wired, 1993)

For more details on this, see:

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a82followthemoney

Despite the claims of "Canadian officials" at the beginning of the 90s 
that they never used Inslaw's PROMIS, in 1999/2000 the Royal Canadian 
Mounted Police conducted a secret investigation within the US. The
reason for the investigation:

-- A trojan horse, or back door, allegedly has been found in computer 
systems in the nation's top law enforcement and intelligence
organizations. --

The quote is from the Insight magazine article series covering the 
RCMP's investigation. It is available here:

http://www.michaelriconosciuto.com/insight1/

The article series ran from January to February 2001.

Thomas

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