I think people would be surprised and sickened to know just how cooperative the big tech companies are with the intelligence agencies. Microsoft is especially cooperative, even as going so far to make sure their systems are compatible with surveillance systems. Yes, Telcos have had to this as well, but I don’t think many people know that Microsoft has proactively done this.
Xbox live is mainly built on a custom VPN protocol. The only part they don't encrypt is their chat in order to allow "lawful intercept". This is a custom protocol to allow this at the level of TCP and UDP called VDP so that you can't really forget to flip the 'don't encrypt' flag for surveillance.
They also switched Skype to using a centralized system for signalling when they acquired it. It's still decentralized at the protocol level, simply Microsoft whitelists their own nodes as supernodes.
Kind of an older article, but illustrates the situation pretty nicely.
Microsoft has also done development work in recent years to enrich the data with more identifiable information and to make the data easier to process for surveillance.
The article you've linked to doesn't seem to implicate them in particular. Apple, Google and dozens of other then-popular companies were also forced into positions of security compromise as well.
Because of the name, however, it was speculated that the key would allow the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to subvert any Windows user's security.
Not only is that poor "proof", how do you propose a public key be used to subvert any user's security?
We have a crisis of morality in tech and society at large. When the ends justify the means, and the ends are in fact unending pursuits of power, then no amount of deception, deceit, collusion is off the table. And yes, people who work at FAANG et al are complicit.
There are enough examples of what happens if you as a tech company don’t cooperate with intelligence that I don’t blame them. There is nothing you can do against people with guns, gag orders, and secret courts when they show up and tell you to do something.
Though yes, Microsoft is a particularly grossly sycophantic player - their strategy clearly is to be the IC’s best friends because it will get them IC contracts and probably help protect/benefit them in many other aspects.
Or people care, but they don't care in the direction that GP wants. I want US spy agencies to spy on non-American living outside the US who have information that affects national security without being slowed down by too many procedures. I don't want them to spy on Americans, but the government actively works to prevent the agencies from doing this, so it's working as intended.
"I want US spy agencies to spy on non-American living outside the US who have information that affects national security without being slowed down by too many procedures"
Do you also want other national agencies to spy on US citizens without "being slowed down by too many procedures"?
No?
Well, if they did not do it before, because of "friendship", then they surely started doing it.
Further increasing the amount of illegal hacking for everyone.
I actually do believe, there should be some restraint with hacking each and everyone because of "national security", because that can applied to everything. There should be a real reason, a actual threat.
China and russia might have had no restraint like you. Agencies in EU countries actually did.
"There is no law that prevents countries from spying on each other, so I don't know what you think is illegal here. "
Depending on your definition of "law", is there a law preventing agencies from going somewhere else and killing and stealing as they see fit?
International law is kind of complicated, but the basic idea is to not interfere with each other to keep the peace.
And activly hacking foreign computers is considered interfering.
How would you consider the act, if a foreign agency would hack the Phone of Biden?
Probably hostile?
Well yes, that was how it was considered in germany, when it became known that the NSA did hack the phone of Merkel. The reason why we are still allies is merely, that russia and china are indeed worse. And that is the reason, why the US is still kind of "the leader of the free world". But keep on doing Guantanamo stuff, hack every friendly nation, say "fuck the EU" and other countries might decide one day, they might as well stick with china then.
Some african and asian states made that decision already.
Hacking into computers on foreign soil, sounds quite interfering to me, or would you be OK with me giving it a try at your computers/network?
"> is there a law preventing agencies from going somewhere else and killing and stealing as they see fit?
Yes, the laws of the country they go to"
Same with hacking. It is not legal, to hack computers here in germany.
And sure, Merkel wasn't surprised, nor was me, or anyone in IT security. But the general population was. They assumed naivly, ally means respecting the other party.
> would you be OK with me giving it a try at your computers/network?
I wouldn't be OK with it, but I wouldn't call it interfering either if you don't actually interfere with my actions after gaining access.
> Same with hacking. It is not legal, to hack computers here in germany
Then try to enforce those laws on other countries, and see how far you get. If the US sent an agent into Germany to kill someone, the killer would be held liable.
> They assumed naivly [sic] [emphasis added], ally means respecting the other party.
> How would you consider the act, if a foreign agency would hack the Phone of Biden?
Well, mostly they do not seem to care that much. Politicians have probably the worst opsec of all people. Mrs. Merkel was a target, but so was President Macron recently:
But I do believe the US government regulary makes an outcry because of russian or china hacking. And into NATO doctrin was a passage included, that makes physical strikes against hackers possible. So they do care.
Increasingly so, yes. In general, hypothetical kinetic responses to non-kinetic actions is a somewhat dangerous direction in my opinion, given the current geopolitical turbulence.
youtube has radicalized jihadi terrorists and white supremacists, facebook has manipulated emotions and played a role facilitating genocide in myanmar, tiktok is controlled by a genocidal regime, instagram depresses teen girls…
though this isn’t much new I suppose, how many times has nike been caught using child labor? how many waterways has nestle depleted, how many animals have been tortured for cosmetics… how many bison were slaughtered to spite the natives, how many whales for lamp oil…
we seem to always find something or someone to exploit
Microsoft is also responsible for the Orwellian (and as far as I know still secret/closed source) PhotoDNA, which is an incredible tool for censorship and surveillance.
A lot of people are dead or in jail because of that software, and not just “predators”.
How do we know that’s PhotoDNA specifically? It seems odd to single that one product out as if there aren’t many people who could use open source tools to build surveillance systems. China doesn’t have a shortage of CS majors.
It's only used to match on known child sexual abuse images. If you're someone who has collected any of these, then you deserve to be locked up in jail. No excuses.
You have no evidence that it has “only been used” that way. There is NO technical reason it is limited to CP. It can just as easily find tank man or pics of feds murdering children at Waco.
Kind of an older article, but illustrates the situation pretty nicely.
Microsoft has also done development work in recent years to enrich the data with more identifiable information and to make the data easier to process for surveillance.
“Companies interested in the contract included Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle”
and
“The deal was considered "gift-wrapped for Amazon" until Oracle (co-chaired by Safra Catz) contested the contract”.
So pretty much every single large cloud provider went after this, though Google did eventually bow out early. Other than winning the second round of the bidding (and not actually going live), is there something Microsoft did specifically that warrants being singled out?
Companies only grow if they are allowed to otherwise they are legislated out of existence. I imagine that growth is actually encouraged if they are bearing fruit.
Azure and AWS have so much money coming in from the government that I doubt either company is going to find anything but jelly in their backbones when it comes to government demands for data.
