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> Microsoft is not a person with principles. It's 90,000ish people with different principles. I'm sure some people really believe in the right to privacy, some want to avoid angering customers, some don't care, etc. The reasons and motivations behind a company's actions are as diverse as the actors involved.

No, they really aren't. It's not even true for a democracy, where "we the people" get to vote for a small elite, which in turns will enact laws taking into account lobbying pressure, pressure from political allies, personal interests, likelihood of being re-elected, and occasionally the interest of the people and personal convictions.

A company, especially at this size, is not a democracy. Maybe the janitor believes in privacy, and the clerk trusts the government, but at the end of the day, strategic decisions like this one rest in the hand of a small group at the top. Some of them may occasionally put their principles before "shareholder value" or "next week's bonus", but it looks pretty rare in practice.

What I can't believe is that people seem to be seriously suggesting taking power away from the justice system.

Are we truly that insane ?

Wasn't the whole problem with "spying" that there wasn't judicial oversight ? Here we have a case where federal prosecutors went for judicial oversight, were put in the right by a judge. Isn't that exactly what you'd want ?

Laughable comment in the article:

> Let there be no doubt that Microsoft's actions in this controversial case are customer-centric.

Really ? Have we truly forgotten this quickly what happened ?

http://thehackernews.com/2014/03/microsoft-admits-spying-on-...

Btw : keep in mind that this case is also about setting precedent. That is why both parties want it to go to appeal, and don't care about the outcome of this particular trial. It is beside the point. Both the US federal police and Microsoft want the American justice system to decide this issue, and well, the current judge can't make that decision (well, technically it wouldn't be final).

So keep in mind this judge is mostly doing the minimum her job requires and trying to be home in time for dinner here. There is no decision made, nothing like what the article claims has happened, legally speaking.

>Wasn't the whole problem with "spying" that there wasn't judicial oversight ?

There was judical oversight... the FISC... aka the rubber stamp

That is the problem with the judiciary today, they have abandoned their responsibility to be a check on government power and instead take the government at their word and rubber stamp everything unless there some defense (which is often not even allowed as these orders are given ex parte in many cases) proves they should be denied

Seriously, I can't even count the amount of times I read about a company doing something good/bad/neutral in a day and reading comments about said action that boil down to "they only did it for money". Who fucking cares what their motivations are, a business is an entity designed to make money and they are made up of multiple different people with different morals and convictions. I wish these people would comment on the actual events and not the "corrupt money grubbing motivations" behind said events.

I have a technique when trying to judge actions of companies I don't really like.

If a company I liked did this would I think it's a good thing?If so, it's probably a good thing.

Because, examining the motivations of the decision makers at Microsoft in this case, allows you to better predict what their actions in the future will be. Seriously, I can't count the number of times on HN, both in this instance and in the past, people have missed this basic principle. Sure, it's great that Microsoft did it in this case, regardless of their reason, but how you should perceive the safety of your data with Microsoft going forward, depends entirely on why they did it. If they did it purely for fiscal reasons, or some combination of fiscal, public relations, and moral reasoning, then how will they act when there is no monetary benefit to be gained by safeguarding their customers' data?

Microsoft is not a person, but it is an organization, and like every organization has a corporate culture. For me, it's absolutely like having a character, exactly like a person has. It certainly starts with the founders, but grows with the company through years of hiring decisions, personal example, and internal communication.

A company, as an organization, can be intelligent or stupid, creative or conservative; it can have social intelligence (Facebook), or it can never get it right with people, but be an excellent engineer (Google). So I don't see why we shouldn't treat an organization as being moral, or immoral, humane or inhumane. By these lines, it's certainly a valid question whether Microsoft is showing character, and high moral standards, or is it simply doing it for personal gain.

I'm really shocked so many people see this as even a question.

I work for a company very similar to Microsoft. If this happened to us, we would do the same thing, for the very same reason.

We would lose every Cloud customer from another country immediately if this was followed. All our work investing and building data centers in the world would be wasted. Companies would pull away all contracts for Cloud work, and we would gain no new ones. It would be the end of the Enterprise Cloud.

Treating Microsoft like "a" person, hmm. I think that works, but we have to consider that persons are rarely 'plain', exhibiting simplistic behavior. If we are to consider Microsoft as person, like we are, we ought to consider it can exhibit truly good and truly bad behaviors sometimes.

That being said, have Microsoft's past mistakes been too big that (what some consider) the good behavior exhibited lately regarding privacy issues is a drop of pure water in an ocean of oil? I'm not implying anything, just asking to provoke thinking.

Can people change? Can large companies change their character? Is Microsoft changing or we are seeing some schizophrenic good actions lately? Food for thought :)