What's the point of having a beautifully, solidly, perfectly secure OS if the hardware itself can be compromised? 

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not about to start manufacturing my own chips and drives.

If you're really worried about privacy, you need to get completely off the grid because your electrical wiring can be used to eavesdrop on you.

And I believe Vilters is correct. While you can reduce the likelihood that your communications will be intercepted, you cannot eliminate that chance, except by not communicating. Snowden knew this -- hence the insane cloak and dagger charade that he and Greenwald and Poitras had to go through before they revealed his identity (and after -- to protect the documents). The moment you have connected to the internet once, your machine is no longer useful. One use only.

But, while I abhor the surveillance state and feel that it is a curtail on freedom that will have serious repercussions well into the future, I also don't think I am very likely to become a direct target. Ever.

And MS isn't controlling my life any more than any other extremely large corporation. Short of moving to the Yukon and living out Jack London's novels, the influence of groups of powerful people over me isn't about to go away, regardless of which OS I use. ;)

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.