Microsoft moves to encrypt data: report

Following further NSA spying revelations, sources close to the matter have said Microsoft is considering encrypting its data to hide from future prying government eyes.

|
Steven Senne/ AP Photo/ File
The Microsoft Corp. logo (left) is seen on an exterior wall of a new Microsoft store inside the Prudential Center mall, in Boston. Microsoft has worked closely with the NSA, according to leaked documents in the Guardian.

Microsoft is the latest tech company to consider taking serious steps to prevent further surveillance, following National Security Agency (NSA) spying revelations.

According to the Washington Post, sources familiar with the matter have said Microsoft is considering encrypting its Internet traffic in light of increasing evidence that the NSA may have intercepted Internet traffic at several major tech companies.

Two previously unreleased slides from Edward Snowden’s leak of classified NSA documents, show collection of online address books from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft-owned Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger. Another e-mail shows Microsoft’s now-defunct account and online payment service Passport may have been a part of another NSA spying program called “MUSCULAR”, that intercepted information traveling between data centers at Yahoo and Google.

Though these documents do not necessarily prove that spying took place, Microsoft and other tech companies have been taking even the possibility of this occurring very seriously. 

"These allegations are very disturbing," says Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith to USA Today. "If they are true these actions amount to hacking and seizure of private data and in our view are a breach of the protection guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution."

Microsoft, as well as Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Apple have filed Amicus briefs and letters to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) in support of a larger group of cases advocating for more transparency. Google has already responded to potential data interceptions by strengthening its data encryption.

The NSA responded to the Washington Post’s questions on Microsoft with a statement:

“NSA’s focus is on targeting the communications of valid foreign intelligence targets, not on collecting and exploiting a class of communications or services that would sweep up communications that are not of bona fide foreign intelligence interest to the U.S. government.”

Not only does the NSA spying have Microsoft and other tech companies taking extra preventative measures, it also could lose them money. Forrester Research, Inc., a research group based in Cambridge, Mass., predicts distrust of US tech companies’ security following the revelations could result in $180 billion in losses by 2016, according to Bloomberg News.

Much of this could come from international customers, such as Brazil and Germany, who may decide to move their data and/or business home where they believe it will be safer than when housed in the United States

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Microsoft moves to encrypt data: report
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/1128/Microsoft-moves-to-encrypt-data-report
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe