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<html newsdate="2013-07-12">
  <head>
    <title>New Snowden leak: Storing your data at Microsoft is negligent</title>
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  <body>
    <h1>New Snowden leak: Storing your data at Microsoft is negligent</h1>

    <p newsteaser="yes">In an <a
      href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data/">article
      published today, The Guardian</a> describes how Microsoft is actively
    cooperating with the NSA.  According to the article, Microsoft is providing
    the NSA with broad access to the communications of anyone using the
    company's services:</p>

    <ul>
      <li>Microsoft gives the NSA access to encrypted mails on Hotmail, Live.com and Outlook.com, as well as web chat messages.</li>
      <li>Microsoft provides the NSA with easy access to its SkyDrive storage service, which currently has 250 million users worldwide.</li>
      <li>Microsoft makes it possible for the NSA to monitor audio and video calls on the Skype service which it acquired in 2011.</li>
    </ul>

    <blockquote><p>"This  makes it clear that trusting Microsoft with your
      critical company data is downright  negligent," says Karsten Gerloff,
      President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. "In both the public and
      the private sector, those responsible for security and data protection
      urgently need to take action to protect their organisations, customers
      and clients."</p></blockquote>

    <p>While it is difficult or impossible to entirely escape surveillance,
    there are ways to minimise the risk that sensitive data, such as
    confidential product data  or patient records, is intercepted by a third
    party. Free Software solutions for groupware, office products and operating
    systems are fully auditable, and often data security a priority. End-to-end
    encryption with Free Software products such as <a
      href="http://gnupg.org">GnuPG</a> and <a
      href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging">
      off-the-record messaging (OTR)</a> protects data in transit. Products
    providing secure audio, video and chat communications, such as <a
      href="https://jitsi.org/">Jitsi</a>, go a long way towards replacing
    Skype.</p>

    <blockquote><p>"We advise companies and all other organisations that wish
      to protect their data to use Free Software solutions, to store data
      in-house wherever possible, and to cooperate only with providers whom
      they trust to protect their customers' data," says Gerloff. "Such
      providers will often use strong encryption, and minimise the amount of
      data they store. Using smaller providers instead of global IT companies
      makes it somewhat less likely that customers' data will be caught in the
      NSA's dragnet."</p></blockquote>

    <p>Users should actively take control of their data and communications. One
    way to do so is to support the developers of Free Software encryption
    technologies, so they can continue to provide these important products.
    "Now is a good time to <a
      href="http://g10code.com/gnupg-donation.html">donate to the Free Software
      PGP implementation GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG)</a>!", says Matthias
    Kirschner, FSFE's Head of Public Awareness.</p>


  </body>
  <tags>
    <tag>front-page</tag>
    <tag>Encryption</tag>
    <tag>GnuPG</tag>
    <tag>Microsoft</tag>
  </tags>
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