Paranoidbot: Diskeeper, Craig Jensen and Scientology

Here's a hypothetical question - would you install this program on your Windows machine? Here's some features:

1) Its chief CEO is a high ranking Scientologist.

2) It trains it's staff in the L Ron Hubbard Management system

3) It rummages through your entire machine, poking around, pushing, pulling and rearranging your files.

Would you say yes? As you're the kind of person who's found Skeptobot then answer is probably "no."

But yet you almost certainly have. Diskeeper
is a defrag corperation, that is run by, and trains its staff in Scientology nonsense. These people then develop the inbuilt Windows defrag software that you use to neaten up your hard drive, and poke around.

Isn't it slightly concerning that Scientology has such access to the whole of your hard drive?

Back in 2000, good old Germany (which beautifully defines Scientology as a "psycho-group") began investigating Diskeeper as a threat to the Constitution.(wired article)

To which the CoE replied:

"Politicians have this theory that we will invade the government and German firms. This really is a stupid thing. What use would we have for all of this data?"

Now one of the main stages in "Auditing" in Scientology is the "PreClear" folders. It's like Confession, where you tell them all your worst secrets (to weaken the attachment of your alien thetans one would expect), and then they store them for all time. "Securely."

Couple that with the California ruling (about the persecution of ex-scientologists) that states:

"…the Church has in its possession his or her most inner thoughts and confessions, all recorded in pre-clear (P.C.) folders or other security files of the organization, and that the Church or its minions is fully capable of intimidation or other physical or psychological abuse if it suits their ends. The record is replete with evidence of such abuse.

From here - page 8 (pdf).

Now I'm sure that Scientology aren't secretly spying on your machine. But I don't trust them. So I think it's an interesting point to be aware off.

Remember the classic privacy slogan - if you've nothing to hide - you're boring.

Disclaimer: I'm still researching what has and is happening. I know for sure that Diskeeper software is in Windows 2000, and I'm pretty certain it's in XP. I've no idea about Vista. I left that rancid OS brand years ago so I've no access to any Windows machines.

UPDATE: 15/2/2008 According to Wikipedia" The defragmenter program included with the Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista operating systems is based on a basic version of a previous Diskeeper version.