You mean more paranoid interpretation.
Microsoft controls the servers, they don't need a client backdoor to access messages.
Microsoft controls the servers, they don't need a client backdoor to access messages.
honestly it amazes me that people still call such interpretations paranoid in a world where information about the rampancy of such programs is readily available, including for this specific application
Edit: it's not paranoia if there's demonstrable history of such things. It's making a reasonable assumption from available facts.
further, all the arguments against this interpretation assume that those introducing security vulnerabilities for surveillance purposes abide by some kind of logic - which by the very nature of such activities they demonstrate that they do not. They (3 letter agencies) want every possible vector of information gathering regardless of the privacy, security, and legal issues that arise.
Secondly, this is a pretty stupid way of doing it. 'If you use this client identifier than anything goes' seems vastly more like a stupid coding mistake than it does a sneaky covert backdoor into accessing Skype from the local machine.
but hey, why not throw out the facts to pile on?
No, because introducing security vulnerabilities to keep us secure is inherently illogical.
This idea is built on the assumption that (1) they think their defensive role is as vital as their offensive one, (2) there is plenty of special NSA voodoo to go round. Which is false. In particular, it is better that a hack come from a vendor vuln that anybody could find than from crypto wizardry (e.g. Logjam or signed drivers with md5 collisions).
Of course they do. You may disagree with the logic, but it's there. Vectors of intelligence gathering have to be both sufficiently covert and useful for an agency to consider. This vulnerability is neither.
Now, everything goes through Microsoft servers where it can be conveniently wiretapped.