New documents have once again brought to light the relationship the NSA has with Microsoft and how they use our data collected from Skype, Outlook.com and OneDrive.

Contradictory to Microsoft’s previous declarations that they will only share user information with the government when required by law, the documents show another side to the story.  A quick read through of the documents leaves no questioning that Microsoft are diligently assisting the NSA with accessing user data.

Microsoft has previously made the following statements regarding Skype, Outlook.com and OneDrive:

‘In 2013 we made changes to our processes to be able to continue to comply with an increasing number of legal demands of governments worldwide. None of these changes provided any government with direct access to SkyDrive.’

‘First, while we did discuss legal compliance requirements with the government as reported last week, in none of these discussions did Microsoft provide or agree to provide any government with direct access to user content or the ability to break our encryption. Second, these discussions were instead about how Microsoft would meet its continuing obligation to comply with the law by providing specific information in response to lawful government orders.’

‘The reporting last week made allegations about a specific change in 2012.  We continue to enhance and evolve the Skype offerings and have made a number of improvements to the technical back-end for Skype, such as the 2012 move to in-house hosting of “supernodes” and the migration of much Skype IM traffic to servers in our data centers. These changes were not made to facilitate greater government access to audio, video, messaging or other customer data.’

The documents indicate differently.  To view the documents follow the links below.

It is evident that our data is not secure.  We need to ensure security of our data through an encryption solution that is not affiliated with the government or organisations with government interests.

Techcrunch:

NSA Docs Detail Efforts To Collect Data From Microsoft’s Skype, SkyDrive, And Outlook.com

Neowin:

NSA Docs Detail Efforts To Collect Data From Microsoft’s Skype, SkyDrive, And Outlook.com