Microsoft and the NSA; Best friends

" #Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the #Guardian.

The files provided by Edward #Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

The documents show that:

* Microsoft helped the #NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new #Outlook.com portal;

* The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including #Hotmail ;

* The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service #SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

* Microsoft also worked with the FBI’s Data Intercept Unit to understand potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

* In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought #Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;

* Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a team sport."

And you STILL want to do business with them? You STILL want to trust Microsoft's OS ( #Windows ) with your personal files and/or communications?

What more do you need? Don't be ignorant, people DIED for the rights Microsoft and the NSA are taking away from you.

[guardian.co.uk]