Of course they did. They have no interest in protecting your privacy and every interest in making you think they do. I would’ve been way more surprised to learn there wasn’t a backdoor.
this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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For anything I want to actually keep private, I only trust the software that I wrote. But LUKS is good enough for most stuff.
The entire Microsoft, Apple and Google ecosystem is USA backdoors. That's why I call it American spyware.
Seems like every week there is another reason why I'm thankful I switched to Linux a few years ago.
Only thing I find annoying with full volume LUKS encryption is that it makes it difficult to resize partitions, it's a whole thing, but it's a minor hassle and not something I'd do every day anyway.
I like to use btrfs subvolumes inside a luks lvm volume for this reason.
You mean that thing everyone knew about since the authorities derailed open-source TrueCrypt and forced them to message their users that they should migrate to BitLocker?
There's an open-source successor to TrueCrypt called VeraCrypt. For that matter, as far as I know, one can still download the last version of TrueCrypt. It hasn't been disappeared.
It's true that the TrueCrypt developers retired and said that commercial packages like BitLocker were finally good enough and available enough that they didn't feel compelled to maintain TrueCrypt. I remember that. I think it's plausible that Microsoft has (or has provided to someone) back-door access to BitLocker, but I don't remember any hint that the TrueCrypt developers had been coerced; have you got something you can link to?
These days, if you're not on Windows you can use luks or just zfs with encryption enabled. Code is open and can be audited by anyone. But yes, VeraCrypt to my knowledge is also still a viable option.
Certainly at the time there was talk of coercion, there was talk the developers had been asked to put in a backdoor, had refused and then been encouraged to cease and desist their work on TrueCrypt and provide written recommendation of BitLocker, the wording of which did not seem to be their own. But people like conspiracies, maybe the authors did just move on, and if that was encouraged it probably was not as sinister as suggested. Security and privacy will always be duking it out.
But people like conspiracies,
In spite of the fact that they never happen and that government mass surveillance isn't a thing and hasn't been exposed repeatedly for decades and that we all know they have not been aiming to do this exact thing for the better part of a century and that they are genuinely evil and literally never prove themselves to be over and over and over.
Good.
We always knew it was there. They sold their soul to the NSA decades ago.
I remember the day I saw the "Intel! Inside" commercial and the logo, and I thought, I don't fucking trust this company.
Yeah no shit Intel inside, you've got every fucking three letter agency inside.
I knew it was over the day they introduced UEFI and TPM.
Tech megacorps are the fifth estate of their home countries, trusting your data to Microsoft or Google is essentially the same as handing it directly to the FBI and CIA.
LUKS, never had these problems...Too bad Win11 won't boot from it.
Okay, but what's the downside
Cold boot attacks?
Dunno... Somehow that seems like a feature to me 😉
Yo tambien
I am so shocked! Well I instantly fucking knew it the second I learned about BitLocker back when and never EVER trusted it, but still, it is shocking!