German Government Says Windows 8 is a Trojan Horse for the NSA?

A German web site, Zeit Online, has posted up an interesting piece where the author states that German government experts suggest that Microsoft's Trusted Computing initiative has culminated into a backdoor for the NSA.

The author goes on to connect Trusted Computing with the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and eludes to the fact that the group of TCG members are all US companies (Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, AMD, and HP).

Despite the article's teaser stating the German government is warning against the use of Windows 8 due it being a security risk, the author goes on to say…

So, the author seems to be using a bit of imagination to connect the dots and maybe the German government has other ideas. In the same paragraph the author suggests that because TPM chips are made in China, that the US, the NSA, and the Chinese are all conspiring to take down the German government – and possibly the world.

The author's recommendation? Move to Linux. Unfortunately, the example he uses, the Munich town administration, started migrating from Windows to Linux 10 years ago with the potential to be completed at the end of 2013. That's a mighty long project plan. They must still be using diskettes for installation media.

I guess the author hasn't read this:  The Linux kernel added support for Intel's TPM hardware in version 2.6.12