The government is in my server!

A client of mine is concerned that the government has infiltrated his server. Here's the story:

Windows domain controllers look for an "outside" time source to synchronize their clocks. One commonly used external source is the atomic clock run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which has a domain name of nist.gov. My company typically uses the NIST clock as a synchronization source. The setting is time-a.nist.gov.

My client is a company that has its roots in Russia and brokers the sale of farm animals between the US and Russia. They "deal in protein," as they humorously say.

One day one of our senior engineers was working on their server troubleshooting a time issue, and the client saw the nist.gov setting displayed in a command prompt window. He immediately panicked, thinking that the government had infiltrated his network and was observing his company's actions, and exclaimed worriedly to our engineer "The government is in my server!"

It was hard not to laugh at that comment, yet there are many out there that do wonder what levels of intelligence the government or other organizations may have on their systems. Is Big Brother alive and well?

-TQG