Ride the Lightning

Microsoft Will Employ New Encryption Initiatives to Foil NSA Snooping

December 2, 2013

USA Today reported last week that Microsoft will step up encryption in an effort to thwart the alleged snooping of the National Security Agency. Senior Microsoft execs met last week to decide which encryption initiatives to employ and how soon.

Newly released documents from the Washington Post describe covert operations against Google and Yahoo, both of which have already announced plans to use more encryption to secure data traveling between their data centers.

Some of the documents reference Microsoft's Hotmail and Messenger services and an e-mail recently released referenced Microsoft Passport as a possible target of the same surveillance project, known as MUSCULAR.

Whatever backroom deals were cut between major American companies and the government in the past, the companies appear to be retrenching in an effort to protect users' privacy. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said that if the recent allegations are true, they "amount to hacking and seizure of private data and in our view are a breach of the protection guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution."

I couldn't agree more and was delighted to see that Smith noted that Microsoft will be engineering improvements "strengthening security against snooping by governments."

You might be a little late to the party Microsoft, but welcome all the same.

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