Microsoft Corp. has made a pledge to fight in court against any attempt made by U.S. intelligence agencies to seize its foreign customer's data under American surveillance laws. This move marks another in a series of steps the company is making in order to reassure users abroad that their information is safe in the hands of Microsoft.
Microsoft, the world's most popular computer and mobile operating system made its pledge late Wednesday night saying that it has never once turned over any such data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and did not believe the authorities are at all entitled to the information stored if it is stored abroad.
"We are committing contractually to not turning it over without litigating that issue," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in an interview with Reuters.
Smith also went on to say that the company would be dramatically increasing the amount of encryption it uses for internal traffic. This is a direct reaction to moves by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in the wake of reports that the National Security Agency had tapped into their facilities overseas without oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
According to Smith, the people at Microsoft has no idea this was going on and were taken just as much by surprise as anyone by the Washington Post's reports based on documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden that the NSA had successfully penetrated the other companies.
"That really was like an earthquake sending shock waves through our industry," Smith said. In the past he claims that discussions between Microsoft and federal officials had always been based on working out what the law required of them. Without any hint that the company might be subjected to attacks based on "technological brute force" instead of legal process.
A spokesperson for Microsoft has said that the company does not believe it can be ordered to install spyware on any user's machine and that it would fight any such order in court.
