Report: Microsoft Gave NSA Access to Skype Calls, Outlook

Excited about using Microsofts cloud technology to store data, and the Skype functionality on the Xbox One? Well then you may want to take a look at this story from The Guardian via Talking Points Memo. More information has come out from the Edward Snowden leaks, this time surrouding Microsofts close collaboration with the NSA which resulted in them giving the FBI and other government agencies direct access to Skype calls and encrypted data over Outlook.

The Snowden files reveal much of what happened between Microsoft and the NSA over the past three years with TPM offering some eye-opening bulletpoints of the collabortation.

• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;

• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

• Microsoft also worked with the FBI’s Data Intercept Unit to “understand” potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

• Skype, which was bought by Microsoft in October 2011, worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video of conversations as well as audio;

• Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a “team sport”.

This is certainly NOT the type of information Microsoft wants to get out there when they are in the process of selling a console that can literally watch and listen to everything you do, but now it looks like they are going to have to answer questions concerning privacy much more seriously than they have in the past. Microsoft, for their part, are stating that they are legally obligated to work with government agencies, and that might very well be so. However, trying to distance yourself from any sort of Big Brother collaboration, all the while trying to install what amounts to a video camera in every living room in America seems like a dichotomy of the highest form. And if this legal compulsion is in any way true, then it also means that Sony might not be fully innocent in all of this either.

There are larger arguments to be made about government intervention and data collection as a whole, but as a consumer we may look to change our purchasing habits when it comes to the amount of surveillance we might be exposed to in this highly technological world. Or maybe it's just something we now expect.