Microsoft Releases 2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report

One of the great things that Google do is the transparency report, it's great to see Microsoft following through.

 

Is this further transparency from Microsoft or another organization reporting Government requests for user data ?

Some points of view:

• http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ement-gets-most-customer-data-from-microsoft/

• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/21/microsoft_law_enforcement_report/

 

Are you asking a question with this? If so, it's both... MS is being transparent over government requests for data.

 

I think if Microsoft (and others) were really interested in transparency, they would provide more information about exactly what was disclosed. What is "non-content" data for example? Would that include a list of all directory file names, their file creation/modification/access dates, and client IP Address information for accesses to cloud storage? A list of all names, email addresses, or other contact information for those you've communicated with along with timestamps and other meta data about the communications? What about browsing history (URLs)? Search engine usage? The higher level activity/behavior profile information that Microsoft generates from all the stuff they datamine (which might be nearly as revealing as the lower level transactional details)?

I don't think National Security Letters fall into either the "a valid subpoena or legal equivalent" or "a court order or warrant" category. The recent decision that the gag order on disclosing whether or not a NSL was received is unconstitutional was stayed for awhile. So I would think these statistics do not include those figures. Which of course should be spelled out via "these statistics wouldn't include numbers for requests we are legally prevented from discussing, if we had received any such requests" type disclosure.

 

Microsoft, Too, Says FBI Secretly Surveilling Its Customers
• http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/microsoft-nsl-revelation/

More on National security letters or NSL's
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

 

Ah, thanks for the link to that NSL range data. I tracked it back to the *FAQ* section of http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/reporting/transparency/. I only read that blog entry and the PDF report. The FAQ section also has some more info on non-content vs content data but I still find it too vague. Others might want to read it though.

 

I find it ironic that the PDF was generated with Adobe InDesign 6 for a Mac!

;-)

 

I find the report pretty much useless. Little to be gleaned from it other than useless counts by country.

 

Microsoft discloses everything YOU do on your computer to the police. **** you Bill Gates.

 

Now I understand why you made your threads in the privacy sections. You're completely misinformed or simply trying to spread FUD. There are enough real privacy and security concerns to deal with without making up more. Let me put it to you short and sweet, if MS could disclose everything you do on your computer to LEA, then why bother getting warrants to search a system? Why use forensics tools? Why don't I have a keylogger or a trojan phoning home or sending data out from my Windows system? It has to get to MS somehow for your theory to work. Gandalf isn't employed by Redmond last I spoke with a friend who does work for MS.

The closest they can come to knowing everything you do is through the use of their services like Outlook.com or Skydrive, and probably Skype now that they own it. Any vendor has access to data that you send to/from and store on their servers. That's a far cry from your claim.

Anyway, no, there isn't much to see in these transparency reports, but there isn't much in the ones Google publishes either. You're not going to get the nitty-gritty out of either company, ever.

 

+1 this, its ok we all overreact sometimes , lols