Feature New to M$ Vista: Enables Government to Spy on you Illegally and Unconstitutionally

I abuse this blog to occasionally criticize Microsoft. As a Mac user (whenever possible), I have a revulsion of products that are forced on people and are as crappy as possible (in order to maximize profit, not to benefit the consumer).

So, yeah, the M$-bashing posts are gratuitous.

And then you come across this which so beautifully combines the two, making M$ fair game for this blog (OK, if this story is true and doesn't get blown up in the next few days...).

It has been a month since my upgrade to Vista. I like to keep up with tech trends and though reluctant to throw out XP, I forced myself to just 'swallow the pill'. After all - change is inevitable, and resistance to change shows only our inability to adapt to new scenarios and obstacles. I refuse to be left in the dust of an evolutionary sandstorm. I have thus relinquished my pride and dipped into the improvements Vista has to offer. Improvements such as increased performance with audio hardware and DAW(Digital Audio Workstation) software. We're talking about a Microsoft upgrade that almost rivals the audio development quality seen on Mac DAW's for years - but with none of the proprietary hardware BS that is forged into the Mac world.

"Wait!"

You exclaim,

"What does this have to do with the title of this post?"

I'm getting to that.

After installing all of my usual apps on Vista I was impressed to see most everything was 100% backward compatible. I expected much of my software to be rendered incompatible. Out of everything I've tried to run on it - 99% produce excellent results in both loading time and performance as compared with those same apps running under XP. Improved support against malware, spyware, and trojans - complete with a user rights management system that a seasoned Linux user could appreciate. All these positive aspects and more, and then.....

ALERT!

After running Vista for only a few days - with a complete love for the new platform the first sign of trouble erupted. I began noticing latency on my home network connection - so I booted my port sniffing software and networking tools to see what was happening. What I found was foundation shaking. The two images below show graphical depictions of what has and IS trying to connect to my computer even in an idle state;

NOTE;
DoD Network Information Center(Department of Defense)

United Nations Development Program(Seems to correlate to the parent branch of the U.N.
InformaticsDivision)

Halliburton Company(We all know these guys)

There have been many other unwarranted connections that I thought too redundant to post images for. To list a couple;

*Ministry of Defense Data Return Agent

*DOHS-Recon(traceroutes for this address provided nothing, suspected blocks on traceroute. Many of us who are monitoring this situation have suspected the acronym stands for the Department of Homeland Security*Reconnaissance?*. This is merely a guess, but an educated one at that.)

I ran traceroutes on the IP's, and sure enough they came back legit and government owned. I thought this might be exclusive to my system, so I ran over to a friend of mine who upgraded to Vista when it first became available(MICROSOFT FAN BOY! ;P ). After installing monitoring software on his system, the hits it caught on his network were immediate and almost identical in source. Attempts on both TCP and UDP by suspicious government owned addresses. Again, even when idle and running only a bare minimum of system processes. I've written a college report on the same phenomenon, which has gained considerable attention by even my instructor. I've posted similar articles on a few tech sites and the like that I frequent more often than this bored, and there are a number of Vista users who have replied with similar claims.

Is there anyone in the abandonia community with a US based connection who is experiencing this watchdog behavior? Are any foreign Vista users experiencing similar attacks from their own countries ministries and governing agencies?

Link to article, link to images.