Is Microsoft — and by extension the likes of Google and Yahoo — being prevented from adding security improvements to its consumer Web services because of U.S. government surveillance demands?
A review of the recent wrangling among Microsoft, the U.S. government and critics of Microsoft’s cooperation with government surveillance efforts provides a glimpse into this complex state of affairs.
The Guardian last week accused Microsoft of giving the U.S. National Security Agency backdoor access to Outlook.com encryption and Skype communications to facilitate the NSA’s anti-terrorism surveillance programs. To be fair to Microsoft, the NSA can already directly access data from multiple Web services, including Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo, plus numerous chat and video services, according to documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden.