Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has assured its international customers that it would fight against any intelligence agency in the United States if the agency attempts to collect the company’s foreign customer’s data under American Surveillance laws.
Microsoft to encrypt the data further
The software giant said that it had never compromised with any such data, and holds the view that these agencies cannot fetch data if it is stored abroad.
In an interview with Reuters, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said “We are committing contractually to not turning it over without litigating that issue.”
Smith added that Microsoft will add more encryption for internal traffic. Web giant Google and Yahoo also resorted to similar steps following reports that National Security Agency (NSA) is filtering the data from their offices abroad without an oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Snowden’s revelation was a game changer
According to Smith, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was shocked after the reports in The Washington Post appeared over the documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden that NSA collected information of the users from many big online companies.
Smith said that the news was like an earthquake, and the shockwave was felt all over the world. The executive said that, during the conversation with the federal officials, it was always discussed that how the law should be, but there was no indication that the federal agencies would attack the companies with “technological brute force” instead of legal process.
Collaboration with other email providers
According to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), it would take efforts to encrypt consumer data, and will work in collaboration with other email providers to protect the messages when users shift from email service providers like Microsoft’s Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail to another, such as those from Google or Yahoo.
Microsoft said it would also expand the use of regional centers that allow governments worried about U.S. “back doors” in its software to inspect the source code.
Amazon is the biggest competitor of Microsoft in the cloud business, and the company’s spokeswoman told that her employer, like Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), offers various tools to the users so that they can lock their sensitive data and issues warning if legal papers have been served for taking access.
The spokeswoman expressed her unawareness whether or not the papers that were presented under intelligence laws, which are secret, had been used to obtain data about international customers, according to Reuters.
