Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
Brave New World and Big Brother continuing to grow in the Land of the Free, the United States of America. Government is simply growing too effing big for its britches. Thank you GWB, BHO, and all your henchmen.
A very disturbing trend, one the government is very likely to accelerate in the coming months and years.
The Washington Post - Microsoft is moving toward a major new effort to encrypt its Internet traffic amid fears that the National Security Agency may have broken into its global communications links, said people familiar with the emerging plans.
Suspicions at Microsoft, while building for several months, sharpened in October when it was reported that the NSA was intercepting traffic inside the private networks of Google and Yahoo, two industry rivals with similar global infrastructures, said people with direct knowledge of the company’s deliberations. They said top Microsoft executives are meeting this week to decide what encryption initiatives to deploy and how quickly.
Documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggest — but do not prove — that the company is right to be concerned. Two previously unreleased slides that describe operations against Google and Yahoo include references to Microsoft’s Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger services. A separate NSA e-mail mentions Microsoft Passport, a Web-based service formerly offered by Microsoft, as a possible target of that same surveillance project, called MUSCULAR, which was first disclosed by The Washington Post last month.
Though Microsoft officials said they had no independent verification of the NSA targeting the company in this way, general counsel Brad Smith said Tuesday that it would be “very disturbing” and a possible constitutional breach if true.
Microsoft’s move to expand encryption would allow it to join Google , Yahoo , Facebook and other major technology firms in hardening its defenses in response to news reports about once-secret NSA programs. The resulting new investments in encryption technology stand to complicate surveillance efforts — by governments, private companies and criminals — for years, experts say.
Though several legislative efforts are underway to curb the NSA’s surveillance powers, the wholesale move by private companies to expand the use of encryption technology may prove to be the most tangible outcome of months of revelations based on documents that Snowden provided to The Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper. In another major shift, the companies also are explicitly building defenses against U.S. government surveillance programs (emphasis mine) in addition to combating hackers, criminals or foreign intelligence services.
Certainly this should be a very big concern for those in the liberty camp that understand too much of a good thing is dangerous to your well being. Including and especially Government.
Via: Memeorandum
