By Alison@Creekside
Feel free to drop by this Microsoft ad and give it a thumbs down.
“At Microsoft, your privacy is our priority.”
Indeed. About that …
Guardian: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages
• Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism
• Outlook.com encryption including Hotmail unlocked even before official launch
• Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls
Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
• In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;
• Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a “team sport”.
US lawmakers, along with Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Yahoo all initially attempted to deny knowledge of PRISM or that the intelligence agencies have back doors into their systems, explaining they are very occasionally under a legal compulsion to cough up customer data to comply with “existing and future lawful demands” in Microsoft’s happy phrase, but this tiny ISP company bucked it and won.
Meanwhile …
NSA Writes Code Used in Google Phone [h/t West End Bob]
The tech giant Google has confirmed the National Security Agency furnished some of the code installed in its new Android phone. The NSA says the code is intended to enhance security against hackers and marketers, but will not confirm whether it also aids the agency’s PRISM program monitoring the global Internet.
Back to the Guardian:
“Blanket orders from the secret surveillance court allow these communications to be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that the target is not a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time.”
That’s us.
Michael Geist Feb 15 2012 on the situation in Canada:
“[W]ith ISPs and telcos providing subscriber data without a warrant 95 percent of the time, there is a huge information disclosure issue with no reporting and no oversight. This is a major issue on its own, particularly since it is not clear whether these figures also include requests to Internet companies like Google and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The RCMP alone made over 28,000 requests for customer name and address information in 2010. These requests go unreported – subscribers don’t know their information has been disclosed and the ISPs and telecom companies aren’t talking either.”
If you’d like to opt out of the NSA and their “team sport”, there are other options:
Related from Saskboy: PRISM: Oliver Stone vs NSA and Checkpoints
“The question is not Do you have something to hide? The question is whether we control government or the government controls us.”
Mussolini expressed the idea of corporatism as an ideal where everything was run by government, employers, and trade unions — within this expression you could argue that at least the workers were a partner, though that assumes a great deal. The sort of corporatism, or soft fascism, which evolving in the US and ally countries does so under the guise of democracy,; with no clear expression as a formal ideal, there is no need to throw a bone to workers, or the people, or anyone, really. It’s purely government in bed with corporations aiming for complete control over the populace. With the exception of the occasional hiccup of disclosure, it’s progressing as smoothly as an historical inevitability.