Documents Reveal Microsoft Helps the NSA Spy on You
Microsoft, the first tech corporation to be brought onto the PRISM program, has also been contributing encrypted information to the National Security Agency (NSA).
Along with this data, the NSA was given access to cloud storage systems and Skype video calls.
It has been reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could request information with ease because the PRISM program “is a team sport!”
Documents obtained state that:
• Microsoft assisted the NSA in breaking encryption codes
• Pre-encryption access was obtained for email accounts for Outlook and Hotmail
• Microsoft cooperated with the FBI with SkyDrive which affected 250 million users
• Microsoft and the FBI Data Intercept Unit (DIU) created aliases for email accounts to gain access to more information on users
• After Microsoft purchased Skype, NSA had full access to the technology
In response, Microsoft said in a statement: “To be clear, Microsoft does not provide any government with blanket or direct access to SkyDrive, Outlook.com, Skype or any Microsoft product. 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.”
However, just after 9/11, the FBI began their data sharing relationship with Microsoft who gave unfettered access to surveying their customers to the federal government.
FBI agents were interested in customer email account information. Microsoft engineers were told to give over new user data to the FBI as it became available.
Slides provided explain how the data mining program was conducted and how real-time surveillance of emails and stored content.
It has been revealed that in September of 2007, Microsoft was the first tech corporation to join PRISM, followed by Google and Apple.
James Clapper, director of National Intelligence (NI), explained PIRSM program last month with the declassification of documents regarding the NSA surveillance initiatives as well as intelligence collections.
It is now known and confirmed that the FBI and NSA are currently syphoning personal digital data from users of major internet and tech corporations.
Clapper has explained how that Big Brother program is governed.
Clapper commented on Snowden’s revelations: “We have seen reckless disclosures of intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe. In a rush to publish, media outlets have not given the full context — including the extent to which these programs are overseen by all three branches of government — to these effective tools.”
Clapper claimed that the “PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program.”
The FBI has been requesting access to backdoors from tech corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo since 2012.
Essentially, the FBI’s Going Dark program which outlines the surveillance “capabilities” of the federal government with regard to “Web-based e-mail, social-networking sites, and peer-to-peer communications” was an easy way for the government to spy without obtaining legal permission.
