Microsoft and the NSA | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft and the NSA

techrights.org

81 pointsURfejk23 comments

My favorite story-in-two-headlines:

NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution (2009) https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f...

Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion. Why, Exactly? (2011) https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/

Any direct evidence that Zoom is giving full access to the NSA now?

More like the PLA

May I ask for the reason/thought behind your question?

Since everybody is now using Zoom and not Skype, I would expect the NSA to try to get the same access to Zoom conversations as they have to Skype conversations. And I don't have the impression that Zoom would say no to billions of dollars to protect its users' privacy.

they didn't even make an effort to make meetings end to end encrypted until press coverage put them under fire

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/31/zoom-meeting-encryption/

Snowden's leaks showed that Skype allowed governments to wiretap its video calls since at least 2010, when those wiretaps were ingested into PRISM. That is before the Microsoft acquisition.

It takes a minute of Google searching to debunk this conspiracy theory.

Microsoft become a PRISM provider in 2007 and Skype in 2011.

The only PRISM "provider" is the FBI, as Snowden's slides clearly show. The dates are when the integration work to ingest data (requested for individual accounts being wiretapped) from the various formats that the companies provide to the FBI completed.

The PRISM slide you're incorrectly referencing shows Skype collection beginning "2/6/11", which in our stupid American short-date format means June 2nd 2011. It's fine if you choose to believe that date has nothing to do with Microsoft's announced-in-May-2011 acquisition of a service that began operation in August 2003, but it's very rude of you to denigrate my completely reasonable observation as a "conspiracy theory". Enjoy your Skype calls :)

There's nothing dinigrating about a theory about a conspiracy being called a conspiracy theory and that reaction gets more and more curious the more I think about it. If you want people to take the idea of plots between the NSA and major companies seriously it seems counterproductive to stigmatise conspiracy theories.

It's a bad-faith term intended only to shut down conversations.

It is a term that has a specific meaning. You have a theory that there is a conspiracy between Microsoft and the NSA. No such conspiracy exists. Skype started to forward wiretap data to the FBI in 2010 (presumably from owned supernodes and POTS gateways), and Microsoft continued that work after the purchase. There is no evidence that either Skype or Microsoft worked with the NSA on Skype wiretaps, and there is no evidence that either took a multibillion dollar payout for it.

I'm not referring to a PRISM slide for when Skype wiretapping began. PRISM ingestion happens long after a system can be wiretapped but presumably contains data from the when the FBI first started wiretapping these systems. I'm referencing documents the Guardian claimed to have seen that said wiretapping work began in November 2010. Also, 2/6/2011 means February 6, 2011 in the American system. According to The Guardian:

"According to the NSA documents, work had begun on smoothly integrating Skype into Prism in November 2010, but it was not until 4 February 2011 that the company was served with a directive to comply signed by the attorney general.

"The NSA was able to start tasking Skype communications the following day, and collection began on 6 February."

It is not rude to point out misinformation, and your comment fits the definition of "conspiracy theory."

Just a reminder that Microsoft also owns many popular authentication services, including GitHub, LinkedIn and Hotmail/Outlook, not to mention Azure AD.

Time to switch to Gitlab I guess

It's fun to see a more old school style website, in both the sense of presentation and content. Go techrights.

http://techrights.org/?stories

Windows 10 is the ultimate spy machine, it was shoved down everyones throats "for free", and constantly phoning home.

Each new OS updates introduces more telemetry and the phoning home can't be disabled unless you have an expensive enterprise version of Win 10 (LTSB).

What makes you think your local data isn't uploaded all the time and evaluated for cases when you request a visa or similar? Or for building a psy profile.

Server seems to be down, here's a copy from Wayback Machine (archived today):

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101084005/http://techrights...

What is the probability that my (a nobody's) Windows backdoor will ever be used?

Depends on whether you are actively engaged in promoting views and beliefs that the mainstream don't want out there.

Or maybe you're interested in securing the future for our children by degrading state secrecy.

Well then clearly you have some work to do. Everyone knows that you've only made it when your a target for eavesdropping by the nsa

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