The question is what he meant by "We can plant bugs in machines."
http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
He mentions its a Lemote machine which doesn't look like it uses an AMD/Intel processor, as it uses Longsoon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson
"Unlike processors from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices or VIA Technologies, Loongson does not support the x86 instruction set. The processor's main operating system is Linux, while in theory any OS with MIPS support should also work."
whereas you might be understanding bug as in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug
I just don't know what to make of this guys story. He has no high school diploma, started out as a security guard and was then given a diplomat cover as a system administrator?
He further claims that his job as a systems administrator gave him access to NSA analyst intercept software which I find difficult to believe. I can't imagine use of the software isn't physically locked to a machine in a secure environment. You wouldn't expect a systems administrator to have access to everything, which he claims he had, everything is compartmentalized.
Now what about an Open Source OS. NSA and DoD loves them some RHEL (Redhat Enterprise Linux). Would they pay RHEL enough to produce binaries that have backdoors in them? Yeah, CentOS compiles the sources and that's cool. But most organizations buy RHEL for support.
Well I would say they would be very stupid to do that as if it ever comes out it will immediately destroy their product.
Now, just like PRISM will most likely damage US companies using or offering cloud services, any revelation of an exploit that _could_ have been developed with cooperation form manufacturer would destroy that company's business.
