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."

US considered hostile

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use US services.

Possible answer

[dkleinsc]

Remember "national security letters" that were created as part of the "USA Patriot Act"? These were the special kind of fake warrants that were never approved by any judge, but any person or organization who got one wasn't allowed to tell anyone about, including a court of law (preventing anyone from saying "Hey, Fourth Amendment anyone?"). That would explain everything: why FISA didn't stop it, why the companies are cooperating with the NSA, and why they aren't including references to such things in their privacy policies.

Bless you, former senator Russ Feingold, for having the guts to stand up for the Constitution when the entire rest of the Senate ignored it.

Are you all FUCKING INSANE?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data [guardian.co.uk]

"Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow usersâ(TM) communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the companyâ(TM)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 FBIâ(TM)s Data Intercept Unit to âoeunderstandâ 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 âoeteam sportâ."

And you STILL want to do business with them? You STILL want to trust their OS with your personal files and/or communications?

What more do you need?

Re:What choice do they have?

[Arker]

"If the courts uphold them, they aren't illegal"

This is unfortunately a common misunderstanding.

16 Am Jur 2d, Sec 177 late 2d, Sec 256:

The general misconception is that any statute passed by legislators bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statute, to be valid, must be In agreement. It is impossible for both the Constitution and a law violating it to be valid; one must prevail. This is succinctly stated as follows:

The General rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of it's enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed. Such a statute leaves the question that it purports to settle just as it would be had the statute not been enacted.

Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principles follow that it imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection, and justifies no acts performed under it.....

A void act cannot be legally consistent with a valid one. An unconstitutional law cannot operate to supersede any existing valid law. Indeed, insofar as a statute runs counter to the fundamental law of the lend, it is superseded thereby.

No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.

Re:MS vs. DOJ settled immediately after 9/11.. Duh

[the eric conspiracy]

Sorry for all you conspiracy theorists, but:

Correlation does not imply causation.