Color me impressed with the no-nonsense and respectful way in which Microsoft tackles this. Looking forward to other tech giants following suit.
The 'privacy is dead' crowd should really take notice of this article.
The 'privacy is dead' crowd should really take notice of this article.
They can say whatever they want about privacy, as long as they sneakily collect data about my computer usage I won't believe a word of what they say.
Even so, saying this as not exactly a Microsoft fan (to put it very mildly) their words (not necessarily their deeds) are spot on, this is really what is needed and privacy really is a fundamental human right.
Now if they will actually act on these words it will count for something.
I also went ahead to not help anyone to install, fix, or do any type of support for such systems; instead I always have with me a usb drive ready to live-test linux, and to replace that ugly thing.
Divulge, Replace, and Extinguish.
While I'm acutely aware of the negative impact various changes had on privacy, cf the leaked documents referencing it, however I'm not sure that statement is blanketly true.
I can now have Skype running on my phone where previously it used to drain the battery in a few hours flat. That is, personally, a huge improvement.
Another thing I've noticed is I get both better video quality (when I use video, I prefer audio only) and I get less disconnects due to "network" reasons.
Furthermore, this kind of article is the last place where they would want to bullshit you, seeing how it is a prime target for their critics.
And then some out-of-control arm of the company comes along and wrecks that (assuming it really is out-of-control rather than that it is a case of saying one thing and doing another).
There was a link here a few months back about some MS tiger team that upper management convened to solve a cross-department issue (something about a webpage in updates?). Additional department heads kept getting added to the call everytime someone said "It's not my issue, it's X's!" (ah, here's the link -- http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/files/library/2003Jangat...)
I think that's what it takes nowadays: "I have the authority to make you and anyone else necessary resolve this" + "I recognize this is a problem"
Too often it's one without the other.
PS: Side tip. I think one great thing large organizations can do is have a more outside-the-org-chart independent problem solver. Problems get reported, they summarize the issue and get priority/sign-off from only above themselves, then they're empowered to pull who they need to fix it. Otherwise "that's an issue that only affects our users (aka not dev)" seems all too common.
The article was not written by "some PR guy", the author is stated as "Brad Smith, the President and Chief Legal Officer". I don't think someone with that position would be blissfully unaware of the telemetry/spying issue. Actions speak louder than words.
Microsoft fired their chief privacy advisor (Caspar Bowden) in 2011 for saying “If you sell Microsoft cloud computing to your own governments than this law (FISA) means that NSA can conduct unlimited mass surveillance on that data” to an internal meeting of regional managers.[0]
He later tweeted that Brad Smith's "posturing as conscientious is nauseating cynicism"[1] about this very case.
I miss Caspar, he was ahead of his time in recognising the dangers of cloud computing (especially in the US wrt FISA etc.). RIP :(
[0] http://www.cloudwards.net/news/ex-microsoft-chief-privacy-of...
[1] https://twitter.com/casparbowden/status/542588420611379201
I just hope it won't use that "third-party trick", where it routes the data through another EU company first, because that would definitely be illegal under the recent ruling, too, but Microsoft may wrongfully believe it's "grey area", so it might just do that. If it does try to use that trick, and then later it's once again confirmed that what it's been doing is illegal, I hope it's sued for all its worth.
Not long ago they were saying that Internet Explorer and DirectX could not be backported to previous Windows versions. I guess with the right incentives nothing is impossible ...
The first is somewhat debatable (there obviously is danger, but more or less than there used to be?), and even if completely true, "dangerous times" have been used to justify a lot of very bad things, so nebulous references worry me.
The second is also a sentence that by itself is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial, but is highly dependent on "timely" and "appropriate". After all, if "timely" means "as soon as we need/want it", and "appropriate" means "we swear we won't look at it unless we need to, honest", then many NSA programs could be loosely described as a way to get "timely and appropriate access to data that is stored online".
It is possible that neither of these sentences is meant to weasel in these sorts of meanings, and that I'm simply reacting to anti-privacy advocates having used otherwise innocuous phrases to justify bad behavior.