The NSA has installed hardware on cables, but that's been known for nearly a decade. Intercepting unencrypted communications isn't much of a feat. It just takes some time and money.
> Another newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook email. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption."
> Microsoft's co-operation was not limited to Outlook.com. An entry dated 8 April 2013 describes how the company worked "for many months" with the FBI – which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley on Prism – to allow Prism access without separate authorization to its cloud storage service SkyDrive.
Would you honestly believe the NSA would want that from a company like Microsoft but not from a company like Google (whose main activity consists of the collection of data in order to build the most precise user profiles to advance the targeting of their ads = ROI)?
The installations were also mentioned in the slides published by the Guardian, you should read all of them.
This also in no way indicates any sort of hardware. Microsoft replied and made it clear they review each order, then comply as required. Perhaps they have a fast review and quick compliance system (if you got as many requests as they do, you'd do the same or close shop).
None of the documents released indicate any sort of hardware installation. Provide specific cites. As-is, you and other folks saying these things are muddying the waters. When the dust settles, it'll be clear there wasn't super-duper decrypto hardware secretly placed all over Microsoft's internal software. Then people will say "oh, they were just lying" and ignore the real issues of oversight, legality, and so on.
> Totally irrelevant ...
Irrelevant only to people who don't understand politics. The NSA isn't asking for cooperation from these companies because they actually need it, but because it provides political cover. In the * * itstorm that will surely result from future revelations of spying on U.S. citizens, the NSA can honestly say, "These companies cooperated in data collection."
> Why would any official requests for user data be relevant, given these circumstances?
As is often said, you may not care about politics, but politics cares about you.
Totally irrelevant, because:
We know for a fact that the NSA has installed hardware at all these companies (Microsoft/Skype, Google, Apple, Facebook, AOL, Paltalk, etc.). They don't need to put in any official requests for user data to get the data.
Furthermore, we also know that 75% of all communication data is being intercepted/covered by the NSA (today! Work in progress...). Why would any official requests for user data be relevant, given these circumstances?