Microsoft's Cooperation With NSA Either Voluntary, Or Reveals New Legal Tactic

holy_calamity writes "When Microsoft re-engineered its online services to assist NSA surveillance programs, the company was either acting voluntarily, or under a new kind of court order, reports MIT Technology Review. Existing laws were believed to shelter companies from being forced to modify their systems to aid surveillance, but experts say the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may now have a new interpretation. Microsoft's statement about its cooperation with NSA surveillance doesn't make it clear whether it acted under legal duress, or simply decided that to helping out voluntarily was in its best interest."

Comments

The demise of an empire

[Taco Cowboy]

As an American, as an American who loves my country, I need to have the courage to face the reality --- that my country has ceased to be the land of the free, the home of the braves, but has turned into an empire which is moving towards oblivion

Re:The demise of an empire

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, as a German who knows the USA well: No it hasn't.

A very small group of people are like that. Most Americans aren't. They have just become apathetic in the face of an imaginary "insurmountable reality".

That is the art of intelligence agencies and social engineering (and churches btw.). It's all in your head... but to *you* it's hard reality. And that's all that counts.

Our Nazis also were just a small group of very loud and very confident assholes, and a huge apathetic mass around them.

So the war is fought in your heads. Starting with your own and those of your friends. All it actually really takes to change everything and take everything evil down, is changing your beliefs (and making sure they're not delusional) and having enough public confidence to make others change theirs too.
The rest is a result of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

The evil ones got in power that way... and they get out of power that way.

I think you and most Americans still actually are "land of the free, home of the brave" Americans. And from now on, you will trust yourselves again.
Deal?

Re:The demise of an empire

[Common Joe]

Deal?

Counter deal from an American living in Germany:

We Americans will work on this with the rest of Europe. When the U.S. does something stupid... say like forcing presidential planes to be put in danger and then searched, you slap the living shit out of the people requesting it and hold them up high so we can make examples of them.

Let's tally

[Taco Cowboy]

Nowadays anything and everything that are related to NSA has been condemned to death by a million cuts.

But we do need to tally up what has actually transpired to the American society BEFORE Mr. Edward Snowden decided to break his silence of the terrible truth ...

The American society before the Snowden era was already a very damaged and trouble society.

The United States of America, as a nation, has already become very heavily debt-ridden, and that the rights of the average Americans has already been greatly reduced by patent-trolls and the copyright-MAFIAA-trolls.

Taken as a whole, NSA is but one of the many players with the nefarous intentions to decimate the Rights of the average Americans as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.

I am not defending NSA, but I have to be fair.

It ***IS*** the system itself, which the government of the United States of America is but a part of it, that is behind the destruction of the Spirit of Americana.

They allowed, hmm... no, they ENCOURAGED the HUMONGOUS CORPORATIONS to encroach into our rights (via patents and copyrights), and they actively fanned phobia against "gun violence" / "terrorism" in order to expediting the destruction of the Bill of Rights.

But the most important aspect of all is this --- that the American people have failed to rise up against the system.

We have become a people who no longer care about our own Constitutions.

Instead of being proud Americans who will fight for liberty and justice for all, we have become the timid Americans who will sacrifice anyting in order to secure a place inside the "safety cocoon" prepared for us, by our Great Leader.

The true "1984" had arrived, and it had arrived 29 years later than as was promised.

Re:What choice do they have?

[readingaccount]

Who says they didn't ask for the warrant? Do you know for sure how the requests went down? Also, what makes them illegal orders? If the courts uphold them, they aren't illegal (they might be immoral, but that's another story).

Google's just better at the PR in these cases. But in the end, both companies (indeed, most companies) look out for themselves. They probably know it's not worth fighting the Unites States fucking Government unless you're pretty damn sure it's worth it.

Don't use Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Microsoft already own a back door into every windows box - they call it "software update" - com patch Tuesday maybe you get something different from everyone else should the NSA want a peek - that's the problem with closed source code - who do you trust?

Re:US considered hostile

[MacDork]

I doubt perfect forward secrecy will help very much when the NSA could just create a validly signed certificate to perform man-in-the-middle attacks on a routine basis. All they need to do is exploit one of your default 'trusted' CAs and you're done.

I'm sure US authorities have already rolled up into Verisign and demanded a copy of their private keys. Even if Snowden doesn't reveal this, given the other unconstitutional actions taken by the US, I have to assume this has already happened.

The system we have is built on trust. We've now learned we cannot trust the US government. The entire system has been broken. We have to rethink it.