> That seems like pretty unreasonable tinfoil. There is no reason for Microsoft to want to give information to governments.
No? I don't think you are being fair.
First of all Microsoft is not one mind. There are lots of motivations bouncing around inside that entity, and not all of those motivations are 'reasonable' like you purport to be.
Second, secret court orders get issued to these big companies all the time. You don't know what kind of affordances Microsoft has provided for US and foreign government and intelligence services.
> I assume they don't pay ...
Oh let's not be pollyannaish, any contract work done for governments would be paid work. Cha-CHING! I see dolla signs. $$$
It's infinitely reasonable to distrust large internet companies that gather interesting user data. paule89 just came right out and says what a lot of us reasonable folk are thinking.
Maybe someone at Microsoft's decided it would be more profitable to salvage the Skype name and introduce some real end-to-end encryption just like the competition has. Or, maybe Microsoft is helping the Five Eyes to use Skype + Signal as a big real-world test bed for cracking or weakening Signal's encryption. I mean, it's just impossible to know what's really going on here.
Highly plausible, but I would suggest the reason would more likely be competition than anything else. Right now Skype's biggest competitor is whatsapp which is growing quickly, has end to end encryption and you dont need a skype name and password you've probably forgotten.
No? I don't think you are being fair.
First of all Microsoft is not one mind. There are lots of motivations bouncing around inside that entity, and not all of those motivations are 'reasonable' like you purport to be.
Second, secret court orders get issued to these big companies all the time. You don't know what kind of affordances Microsoft has provided for US and foreign government and intelligence services.
> I assume they don't pay ...
Oh let's not be pollyannaish, any contract work done for governments would be paid work. Cha-CHING! I see dolla signs. $$$
It's infinitely reasonable to distrust large internet companies that gather interesting user data. paule89 just came right out and says what a lot of us reasonable folk are thinking.
Maybe someone at Microsoft's decided it would be more profitable to salvage the Skype name and introduce some real end-to-end encryption just like the competition has. Or, maybe Microsoft is helping the Five Eyes to use Skype + Signal as a big real-world test bed for cracking or weakening Signal's encryption. I mean, it's just impossible to know what's really going on here.