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How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

guardian.co.uk

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Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#71

Post by Afforess »

pvnick wrote: post #2

Microsoft's June 7th statement: "We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it." One down, several to go. If I were Google/Fac…

It's interesting to contrast our current attitude with Microsoft/Skype with similar news 1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254925

Oh how times change.

Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#72

Post by nisse72 »

josteink wrote: post #31
devindotcom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the anger should be directed at the laws, but the problem is that we are so woefully uninformed about those laws. And not just that we're not paying enough attention - these laws are being formed and executed in secret! How can you take action against something you don't know exists?

> And not just that we're not paying enough attention - these laws are being formed and executed in secret! How can you take action against something you don't know exists? You start by demanding that this process, this subversion of democracy, be made illegal. This is the root of the problem: secrecy. Secrecy corrupts as much as power, and absolute secrecy corrupts absolutely.

I'm inclined to suggest that secret laws are themselves a symptom of an already corrupt government, and simply open the door to further corruption.

Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#74

Post by mafribe »

rgulati wrote: post #48
mtgx wrote: post #3

I don't get Microsoft. Are they really that hypocritical to the core and so shameless? Why in the world would they launch a "privacy" campaign against Google when they're in a glass house themselves, and so vulnerable? Why the hell would they even put themselves on the spotlight like that? Or are they really that comfortable with lying, that they have no problem attacking others over something, even though they are j…

I don't get posts like this. How is giving access to the government according to the law of the land the same privacy-wise as data mining personal emails to show ads? The point of the privacy campaign was that Google mines the contents of personal email messages to show ads and to build your Google ad profile while Outlook.com doesn't. What's hypocritical about it? I don't like their campaigns either but lets call a…

What do you mean by "the" government? If "the" government requires Microsoft to give access in this form, there's something wrong with "the" government that needs urgent change.

Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#75

Post by acqq »

bad_user wrote: post #51
devindotcom wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting conflict to me is that Google et al don't appear to be fighting this battle. When it comes to other things, they are in the streets, funding lobbyists, building protest websites, and so on. But this, which threatens their entire business model (essentially trust-based), they haven't made a peep about. It may just be a gag order thing, sure. But with the level of access required for stuff like this, I…

Oh, come on. Developers only need to build some APIs - those APIs can be multi-purpose. They don't need to know that one such purpose is NSA spying - you can come up with dozens of other reasons for wanting a "back door". The actual interface that's used for responding to legally binding orders or subpoenas and that uses the APIs in question can be built by people on NSA's payroll. Besides executives, the only people…

As far as I understand from the other press coverage the current procedure is that people in MS legal department don't even have to "check" that specific orders exist, it's something that the API user is supposed to do on their side. The procedure specifically allows API requests and monitoring immediately and providing the orders in some-week time or if the order doesn't come "destroying" the obtained data that aren't metadata. Metadata can always remain because they are considered "public" in the current up-to-recently secret law interpretations. And for non-US-citizen-or-not-on-US-soil data the orders are never needed.

Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#76

Post by magicalist »

jcarney wrote: post #56
antoko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself, but I'm sure others share the sentiments, its not that i think google is somehow "good". They're obviously not, the difference is that they're still a cool tech company doing cool things on a massive scale (or potentially very disruptive). self-driving cars, balloon network testing in NZ, google fiber, and more mundane things like Golang and angular. I don't give them a pass, its just that in the…

Google isn't above doing things that harm people to make them more money. Like the steadily decreasing background contrast and lack of borders separating ads from search results. Older people are far less cognizant of borders and thus would click on ads thinking they're search results. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional... They recently got rapped by the FTC for it. http://wallstcheatsheet.c…

Actually, the "they" that got "rapped" by the FTC were "AOL, Ask, Bing, Blekko, Duck Duck Go, Google and Yahoo as general purpose search engines and 17 'of the most heavily trafficked' shopping, travel and local search engines"[1].

These were reissued rules that clarified and enhanced the rules issued by the FTC in 2002 to make advertising clear. It likely came out of Danny Sullivan's letter to the FTC[2] showing how the competitors accusing Google Shopping of not disclosing paid inclusion well enough had no intention of themselves following the FTC's rules.

> The difference is that the negative Microsoft news tends to float on top of sites like HN more than positive news, and the reverse is true for Google so this alters perceptions of people.

You clearly visit a different HN than I do. While there is plenty of positive Google news here, the negative news in the top 10 is almost daily (Reader, account closing, PRISM, etc). Considering your account is 6 hours old (with 196 karma!), maybe stick around for a while before making pseudo-hypotheses about story dynamics?

[1] http://searchengineland.com/ftc-search-engine-disclosure-164...

[2] http://searchengineland.com/a-letter-to-the-ftc-regarding-se...

Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#77

Post by mikegerwitz »

pvnick wrote: post #2

Microsoft's June 7th statement: "We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it." One down, several to go. If I were Google/Fac…

Word games; notice the use of the term "voluntary".

This also provides some answers to http://www.skypeopenletter.com/.

Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#78

Post by sentenza »

znowi wrote: post #25
devindotcom wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting conflict to me is that Google et al don't appear to be fighting this battle. When it comes to other things, they are in the streets, funding lobbyists, building protest websites, and so on. But this, which threatens their entire business model (essentially trust-based), they haven't made a peep about. It may just be a gag order thing, sure. But with the level of access required for stuff like this, I…

The peculiar part for me with Google is that they seem to be somehow immune from all the revelations. People keep stand by it and get annoyed when reminded of their wrong-doings. I suspect at this point, they're not much different than Microsoft. But the "don't be evil" brand is still strong in the mind of many.

I might be just a single data point, but PRISM is the primary cause of my slow but persistent move away from Google services.

Oh, btw, I know many people over here in Europe who never use any Google service other than search out of general mistrust towards the company. Might not help them much, as the search history combined with the IP-address logs of all the G+ buttons is already a pretty encompassing profile, but nonetheless they exist and constitute a non-negligible fraction of the populace over here.

Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#79

Post by pvnick »

Afforess wrote: post #71
pvnick wrote: post #2

Microsoft's June 7th statement: "We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it." One down, several to go. If I were Google/Fac…

It's interesting to contrast our current attitude with Microsoft/Skype with similar news 1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254925 Oh how times change.

I remember this, has it really been a year? Man, time flies. It is indeed interesting how far the attitudes have shifted.

Re: How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

#80

Post by temac »

toyg wrote: post #34
devindotcom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the anger should be directed at the laws, but the problem is that we are so woefully uninformed about those laws. And not just that we're not paying enough attention - these laws are being formed and executed in secret! How can you take action against something you don't know exists?

Secret laws are the death of democracy; not just that, they are the death of the Rule of Law itself. The whole point of having written laws was that everybody could know and challenge them in a fair way, without being reliant on the whim of rulers. "Secret laws" are not laws , they are tyrannical pseudo-rules that belong in the Middle Ages.

In France you have a principle that says "Nul n'est censé ignorer la loi", ("no one should ignore the law") that has a double meaning: you can not escape your responsibilities by saying that you ignored a law, and, as a corollary, no law should be purposely hidden from you.

Still, I've no doubt that french secret services practice all kind of immoral if not illegal stuffs (at the widest scale they can afford), and they have "interesting" theories about what allows them to do that (or maybe they they are just crazy enough to don't care at all, like the recent declaration about the law not applying at all to those programs seems to says...)

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