Before they were part of Microsoft, Skype tried to accommodate the NSA by opening up it´s proprietary encoding of Skype conversations. The really worrying partis that less than 12 people knew about it within the organization.
If true, this makes you think twice about the denials from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and others. How many people know and if sworn to secrecy they can´t share it with their colleagues.
The interests of Silicon Valley and the NSA are similar: Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans.
The NYT says this:
Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.
Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and-spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html
That's why I don't allow Skype in my machines.
+Max Huijgen As the Mumbai terror attack was in progress, the Pakistani terrorists were conversing in real time with Pakistani handlers (ISI officials and Lashakr-e-Taiba) in their safe house in Karachi over skype. Indian intelligence had real time access to these calls (altough they could not pin point the location of the other party in Pakistan which required american help to complete the dots.
These conversations have subsequently been released publicly.
+Luis Carvalho im not sure it matters what you use, if you are on the internet then they probably have access.
I am aware of that. That's why I use Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird and a bunch of other things that while not solving the problem, minimize it. 🙂
This issue is more specific to Microsoft and their moral compass, not so much as to all of the other tech companies. Skype has been questioned in the past for its security and privacy policies.
I've got one word for NSA….Alt+219
…..or Alt+184….take your pick.
Hey, NSA, ….wazzup?
indeed! makes you think twice, , can't say that i ever really believe any of the loud proclamations by these large enterprises that they would defy national requests for private information, ,. in Europe it may be different but in North America, i think they doth protest overly, while having given the backdoor keys long ago
I stopped using Skype personally after they forcefully installed EasyBits Go crapware without my explicit permission…
I'm more and more interested in the development of WebRTC support in open source browsers. That way I can have encrypted video/audio communication via my own servers and direct client-to-client connections.
Isn't this an opportunity for Europe? Think about it
As if Europe (or any government at all) can be trusted…
It is all expected.
+Steven Styffe This was before Microsoft bought Skype
I would agree +Pedro Margarido that this is an opportunity for European services (cloud, voip, email, social networks) to get an advantage. Privacy regulations on EU level are much stricter.
I have been saying this about Skype for yares now… There was "smoke" around this issue when it belonged to Ebay – The people who look at data from the supernodes started saying that something was amiss back then.
+Neil Howard And the problem was always the inability to audit the source code. So we never really knew what Skype was doing with all it's P2P, Supernode, Relay, NAT busting code. And the moment they did the "special" version for China, it was always possible they'd done a special version for America as well.
For a while there though there was a possibility that Skype's encryption tech was genuinely hard to break. And the trade off with that style of P2P and lack of central servers is that it makes it very hard to implement within a browser. So as long as we want G-Chat, Hangout style instant messaging in the browser, we're not going to be able to guarantee privacy. (IMHO)
+Julian Bond I was one of the original beta testers of Skype (The network used to crash when the 5 Thousandth person joint it LOL!) and I understood the reasons for closed source waaaay back then.
Now (and I have had this opinion for a few years now), with the "evil" actions of corporations and govt's I will only use open source stuff that has been "peer reviewed|" to do anything that I feel is sensitive, Skype , G+ etc. is only for trivial stuff… But you DO need to be really careful about associations that can be made. 🙂
(My work takes me around the World, dealing with sensitive stuff)