Comment by nikcub | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nikcub | Hacker News Reader

Article is from 2007 and most of it turned out to not be true . When Skype is served a subpoena, they can only return account information, they are unable to intercept or log voice or video calls[1] [2].

This is a big deal in China and Russia[3] where they block the service since they have no way of intercepting it (ie. it is secure enough for two very large governments to have no way of dealing with it).

Further proof is that there are no publicly known cases where skype call or chat logs have been submitted as evidence, while you see google, microsoft, ebay, craigslist etc. appear all the time.

Skype is an independent company again - and the reason why eBay bought it back then is revenue ($850M pa last year), not some conspiracy theory

outside of the odd client exploit, skype is safe. I would trust it if I was a dissident in an unfriendly foreign country and needed to communicate securely.

[1] http://www.voiptechchat.com/tech/34/skype-says-no-to-wire-ta...

[2] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9962106-38.html - see skype only IM company that does not comply with wiretap requests

[3] http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/07/russia-not-the-f...

1. Skype is not blocked in Russia. Federal security officials voice their concerns about Skype every once in a while, which causes rumors about possible blockage in media. Although nothing came out of it yet.

2. In China all skype servers redirect to their Chinese partner http://skype.tom.com/ Tom Skype has everything that you would expect in QQ or other Chinese IM's, namely intrusive ads and content filtering. There is research showing how much data is leaked by the Tom Skype and how insecurely it is stored. http://www.nartv.org/mirror/breachingtrust.pdf

It is quite worrying that Skype has a such partner. Although it makes me think that Google would have more success in China if it found a Chinese partner like Tom Google.

In a previous startup I spent a long time talking to TOM about taking our product into the Chinese market. It comes down to them knowing people, and they are very very good at what they do and very reasonable. I have no doubt that because of the culture in the country and the way that business is done that having somebody like TOM would be a huge gain for Google. Kai Fu-Lee was supposed to be that, but he left. You can't really send Americans out there to establish a business

There's nothing in your post that actually rules out the possibility that the NSA has access to Skype conversations--the NSA doesn't generally share intel with law enforcement, much less Russia and China.

Indeed, the fact that Skype was spun off by Ebay, and is preparing for an IPO with close to $1Bn in revenue, contradicts a significant part of this conspiracy theory. Although, it still could be true.

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