Microsoft exec: Targeting of Americans’ records ‘routine’

The headline is so non-descript that it makes it sound like the Microsoft executive is shrugging this off, but the testimony says otherwise:

> Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day.

> “Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American’s email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud,” said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.

If these are from out of state what is to prevent them from just saying no? I'd imagine there is some interstate process that they have to follow in order to make it valid where Microsoft is headquartered.

Once the security apparatuses and their methods are entrenched it's hard for them to go back.

Congress was spied on, a US presidential candidate that we know of was spied on... So imagine plain old American citizens... what can we expect?

If congress isn't willing to take back what they allowed, they aren't going to stop all by themselves. If congress tried, they'd get a lot of pushback. Just like the Armed forces would push back on a spending cut back even though the cold war ended over 30 years ago and our budget dwarfs any one else's.

But you see that same phenomenon in run of the mill operations like homelessness non-profits. Their heft and momentum keeps them going and if you wanted to dismantle them they'd put up a big fight and tell you that while homelessness has gotten worse without them it would be doubly worse even though they never made it better to begin with but their directors live well.

I wonder why ? Could it be because of all the spyware M/S has on Windows 10 ?

Nice for one stop shopping