Government installing Hardware Keyloggers in all new PC's?

It has been quite some time since I have been here but I couldn't not post this. While surfing the net today I ran across this site which claims that a hardware keylogger was discovered in his brand new laptop. Upon contacting the DHS he received this letter in response.



Here is link to the site

www.fearthegovernment.com...

Also if this has already been posted I apologize.

That hardware looks a little complex for a simple keylogger, but then again i'm not an electrician.

I don't think it's been posted beforehand, but i also doubt that something like this wouldn't be noticed...

It's possible it's merely something that is what it isn't.

It was pretty much debunked in this thread a couple of years ago.

Last time it came up, it was Dell who was putting in the keyloggers.

Yep, I also heard about keyloggers in Dell laptops, that's actually a problem, but not so big as it could be as the problem of keylogging is so widespread, so I can't even imagine a user without any anti-keylogging protection. As for protection from HARDWARE-based keyloggers personally I am using Privacy Keyboard (www.anti-keylogger.com...). Nevertheless such things like putting keyloggers in brand new PCs can lead to paranoia.....

Keyboards in laptops don't use round cables like that, it's flex cable. The keyboard controller reads the laptop kbd as a matrix, you've got row and column contacts that it scans. So it's not like a keyboard for a desktop.

Next, for a EE he's pretty lame, because it's not a "programmable interrupt controller", a mistake a designer would never make.

Next, that particular part doesn't have a mac or phy for an ethernet connection, so there's no way you could "hook it to your ethernet board" and interrogate it. The ethernet board used is "dumb" and couldn't build the frames itself, either. So that can't work that way.

Finally, there's no need for it. If you were shipping them "pre-loggered" you would just rewrite the keyboard controller code a bit and/or add a driver or rootkit to the system software and send it that way. You don't need extraneous hardware.