Bad Outlook on Privacy

[level_head]

To avoid government snooping into the contents of emails, many people use encryption. But if you use Microsoft Outlook, there’s a problem with this: Microsoft helpfully saves the unencrypted version of the email for the NSA before doing the encryption for you, according to this UK article:

The documents show that:

• Microsoft helped the NSA to

Comments

[makovette]

When TLA guys in shades with a secret court order show up, you do what your told :(

[level_head]

While this is true, and it is what Microsoft claims in their own defense, it is evidently belied by the details of the NSA documents.

It appears that Microsoft has gone out of its way to be accommodating - and that their assertions that "we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers" can only be true if you consider all of Skype or all of Outlook/Hotmail to be a "specific account."

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

[makovette]

I can see Ballmer (who I have a remarkably low opinion of) proactively working with the TLAs as a way to get more of his products into the various branches of government. IE: It was a business opportunity to put a price tag on the bill of rights.

As to making vacuous and misleading buzz word filled public statements about privacy and just about anything else, MS has a long and strong record of doing exactly that.

That our government created the opportunity for MS and has (probably) coerced other major providers to do this in the first place is reprehensible and likely irreversible at this time.

[richardf8]

I wish I could feel outrage at this. I doubt that this began, or will end, with the Obama administration. I honestly cannot remember a time, regardless of who was president or who controlled congress, when the response by government to security technology was not "but you WILL see that we can get into it, right?"

This leaves me largely agreeing with Mako; this particular genie has been out of the bottle for as long as I have been alive.

So, Snowden - Hero or Traitor?

ETA - This also means that I basically have no expectation of privacy with respect to email, letters, or any of my daily transaction. I don't LIKE living in a fishbowl, but I have come to expect it.

[harvey_rrit]

It occurs to me that you may like THE GOLIATH STONE.

It's at Barnes&Noble if you're interested.

[level_head]

I will obtain this. My own work in the area has been modest, and nothing actually published yet except a few short stories in a larger collection.

But I've enjoyed the novels I'm writing in the Octans' world. How do you build the social structure of an early-technology future octopus civilization? With a lot of arm-waving.

Oho! The Goliath Stone was just released! I'm intending to get the Kindle version unless you recommend otherwise.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

[harvey_rrit]

Larry and I still get paid, so get whatever works for you.

Inveigle your friends to do likewise.

[level_head]

Got it, finished it, enjoyed it. A feel like a blend of Baxter's Manifold Time and, of course, Fallen Angels. Lots of ideas at high speed, delivered with humor and rather exotic dialog.

More later. Thanks!

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

[marmoe]

Welcome to the club.

[itzwicks]

They finally proved that NO MAN can ever be an island unless one forsakes all electronic communications, transactions, and involvements with anyone else who does.

We might have free will of a sort, but we will never truly have privacy, ever.

[level_head]

Yes and no, my friend. This particular behavior is one that required specific government (and corporate crony) actions to undertake. It is possible to arrange things so that this would not occur.

I think it's fixable, I just do not see it as likely to be fixed.

Good to see you! I hope you're staying out of the path of tornadoes! The fact that 2013 is a record low year for tornadoes doesn't help if one is knocking on your door.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Paranoia, perhaps justified

[ext_40416]

I've had clients have to send everyone home while the police copied their server drives (of course they arrived with a search warrant. Which was painful to watch a company brought down for half a day, with no recourse, and left me hoping it would never happen to my business.

But I find it more disturbing to think that a warrant could be served and my data combed through without my even being aware of it. It seems to me that the police being required to serve a warrant before entering in all cases was a protection against unwarranted snooping. When no one is aware of the snooping but the snoops there is far too little chance of push back for unjustified searches.

I start looking at projects like Truecrypt and their hidden partitions thinking it's crazy to think that is necessary, but I can also see why people might want to implement it...

In the end I think it should give companies and individuals a little more pause about trusting the cloud to securely hold their data.