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Comment by Forgeties79 | Hacker News Reader

> The headline is misleading. It says that Microsoft will provide the key if asked, but the linked statement to Forbes says Microsoft will provide the key if it receives a valid legal order.

This is an odd thing to split hairs over IMO. Warrants or subpoenas or just asking nicely, whatever bar you want to set, is a secondary concern. The main issue is they can and will hand the keys to LEO’s at all.

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If you don’t like the behavior of a company voluntarily doing something, your problem is with that company. If you don’t like a company complying with the law, your problem is with the law. It is unreasonable to expect anyone or any company to break the law or violate a court order to protect you.

If you don’t trust the institutions issuing those court orders, that is an entirely reasonable stance but it should be addressed at its root cause using our democratic process, however rapidly eroding that process may seem to be.

The fourth amendment protects against warrantless search and seizure, it is not carte blanche to fill up your hard drive with child porn and expect Microsoft to fall on their swords to protect you.

> The fourth amendment protects against warrantless search and seizure, it is not carte blanche to fill up your hard drive with child porn and expect Microsoft to fall on their swords to protect you.

I was understanding and felt your points had validity until you threw out this gross, emotionally manipulative, horrible misrepresentation of my stance.

These are common tactics abusers of authority use to continue abusing authority.

Only if you see it as that. More charitable is to see it as an example and clear case to illustrate of what might be beyond coverage of the amendment.

I see it as that because of the way it is.

The ideal is that they have no ability to comply or not comply: they shouldn't have the keys to begin with.

It is wild to me this has to be explained on HN

The ideal is that Microsoft's customers are not idiots who will lose their keys. But that's just not reality, and those customers matter more than using what is arguably the objectively correct design in a certain light

The even-more-main-issue is that there is > 0 number of people who thought they wouldn’t

I appreciate the sentiment and do think most people should know not to trust Microsoft by this point, but I do think we have to be a little careful not to steer too hard into caveat emptor and forget who the perpetrators are in the first place.

I hate MS as much as anyone else, but I don't have a problem with them doing this. Legally they have to comply if they have evidence in a legal action. Maybe they are at fault for not solely relying on the TPM, or not giving users informed consent about using the cloud, but I cannot fault them for not going to battle for civil liberties when they can't even implement notepad without screwing it up.

You absolutely can and should fault them. This is a choice they made.

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