Microsoft keeps Skype content safe from police data slurping - for now Microsoft has not yet handed over the content of any Skype conversations to regular law enforcement requests in the last six months, Redmond has revealed. Redmond's stance was shown in its second transparency report, released on Friday. However, the report does not contain national security letter requests, so NSA and FISC and …
When you parse their actual statement, it becomes clear that it's nothing more than meaningless noise:
"not yet" (but they're just about to)
"handed over" (because it's self-service)
"the content" (but metadata is fine)
"any Skype conversations" (what about video and text messages)
"to regular" (of course, no one who asks is "regular" LEO)
"law enforcement" (but the NSA isn't a LEO)
"requests" (why make a request when you already have a back door)
"in the last six months" (before that, well...)
>"As with the 2012 report this new data shows that across our services only a tiny fraction of accounts, less
>that 0.01 percent are ever affected by law enforcement requests for customer data. Of the small number that
>were affected, the overwhelming majority involved the disclosure of non-content data," Microsoft wrote.
Weasel words.
Translation:
"Across our services just about everything you do is creamed off to the Agency that dare not speak its name. But if we tell you about it we'll be in serious trouble."
"Microsoft has not yet handed over the content of any Skype conversations to regular law enforcement requests in the last six months"
Why is Microsoft routing all Skype communications through super-nodes in North America? And don't say it's for efficiency, in peer-to-peer communications, that doesn't make sense. As such all such assurances out of Microsoft and the rest, are totally bogus and false ...
"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"
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
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There was a time when people trusted companies to do only what the software said it would do. You bought a spreadsheet, it does spreadsheety things. Only viruses and dodgy Russian software sent your data across the internet.
Now everyone is into advertising and tying you into online services. At one level, most people accept the risk, but I don't think many people really trust the big names and the government anymore.
The issue over RC4 is representative - we don't need to hand over data because our random number generator is slightly badly coded.
Agreement. In addition to the confusion of "what can be trusted", that has been generated by recent events, it is all somewhat unwelcome.
Fundamentally what is wrong with this article is that no percentage other than "0" is acceptable without a served warrant from an open court.
It is *almost* amusing to hear the PR departments try and make an honest statement, when we have been "told" they are legally not allowed to tell the truth.
Its a bit of a farce...
P.
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