14 DAY TRIAL // The PRISM saga continues in the Redmond empire, this time with a new report claiming that the Softies have provided the NSA with direct access to Outlook.com, Skype, and SkyDrive accounts.
Citing top-secret documents, The Guardian reports that Microsoft has a long collaboration with US intelligence agencies, including the NSA and the FBI.
According to this article, Microsoft allowed agencies to collect data on Outlook.com, Skype, and SkyDrive accounts despite the implemented encryption technologies.
It appears that the NSA was afraid that Microsoft’s encryption system would block the interception of web chats on the Outlook.com email platform, so the tech giant has helped the agency access specific accounts.
At the same time, the report claims that Microsoft was a key member of the PRISM program and worked closely with the FBI to allow intelligence agencies to access Skype and SkyDrive accounts without prior requests.
Quotes published by The Guardian and allegedly coming from newsletters dated December 26, 2012 reveal that the Redmond-based company collaborated with the FBI to develop a new feature that would allow the government to spy on specific accounts and bypass the encryption features put in place by its engineers.
“MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal [with the issue.] These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012,” the leaked documents show.
Other top-secret papers reveal that intelligence agencies asked Microsoft to allow them to collect users data from SkyDrive without any special request.
“This access] means that analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this – a process step that many analysts may not have known about,” the papers read. “This new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response. This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established.”
The same leaked documents claim that Skype officially joined the PRISM program in November 2010, before the Microsoft acquisition, but technologies to track user conversations have remained available in the application. “Feedback indicated that a collected Skype call was very clear and the metadata looked complete,” NSA documents state according to the same report.
Microsoft has already denied the accusations, clearly stating that it only provides access to user accounts based on government requests. Here is a statement sent by the technology giant to The Verge:
“We have clear principles which guide the response across our entire company to government demands for customer information for both law enforcement and national security issues. First, we take our commitments to our customers and to compliance with applicable law very seriously, so we provide customer data only in response to legal processes.
Second, our compliance team examines all demands very closely, and we reject them if we believe they aren’t valid.
Third, we only ever comply with orders about specific accounts or identifiers, and we would not respond to the kind of blanket orders discussed in the press over the past few weeks, as the volumes documented in our most recent disclosure clearly illustrate.
To be clear, Microsoft does not provide any government with blanket or direct access to SkyDrive, Outlook.com, Skype or any Microsoft product.
Finally when we upgrade or update products legal obligations may in some circumstances require that we maintain the ability to provide information in response to a law enforcement or national security request. There are aspects of this debate that we wish we were able to discuss more freely. That’s why we’ve argued for additional transparency that would help everyone understand and debate these important issues.”