Microsoft and Privacy
A 22 page document on how they store your data in their online servers in case law enforcement wants it.
Welcome to the fish bowl.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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February 25th, 2010 at 11:01 am
I really don’t see the issue here. Banks store your documents and transactions and will readily turn them over to law enforcement. Walmart can track your purchases via check / credit cards and would turn them over to law enforcement.
The thing is they still require subpoenas to get this stuff, just like they require any other search warrants.
As someone who formerly worked for one of the largest consumer shopping data warehouses, nothing you do is private anymore outside of your house. Every transaction, every last thing you do that requires a computer, can be tracked.
At my previous job, we could tell a grocery store how many people making $X a year bought paper products on Wednesdays during the summer. By collecting massive amounts of information, we were able to help stores and manufactures move more products by lowering costs when it made sense. Due to the nature of the business, we could even give higher value coupons to customers we knew didn’t buy paper products from that particular store. (You can swap paper products for anything, that’s just an example).
My old company didn’t collect that data so it could watch people and spy on them to report them to the police, we watched shopping habits in order to provide the manufacturers and retailers a targeted group of people (no use in advertising diapers to people who never buy baby products, no use in giving high value coupons to people already purchasing your product). By doing so, they could target individuals based on shopping habits.
Could that information be used for nefarious purposes? Sure. Some DA with a wild hair up his butt could request all the purchases for a particular credit card number / check number / frequent shopper card and then deduce the increased purchases of K-Y and Teen Beat indicate [Person Of Interest] is a pedophile.
The market speaks though. While there are people who bitch and moan about frequent shopper cards and whatnot, the overwhelming majority of people really don’t care and have no problems trading some privacy for better prices.
So, yeah. Fishbowl.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:48 am
The whole “Cloud” concept has me concerned.
February 25th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Does anybody seriously think that this works. I am yet to hear of a single terrorist that microsoft has busted. The only criminals they seem to bust are chinese hackers and that goes nowhere. I could care less what the microsoft or the government think they see. If they think something charge me and see how much I make on the counter suit. If not piss off.
February 26th, 2010 at 11:50 am
Nevertheless, regardless of who stores it and what reason they’re capturing it, the information stored will NEVER be used to your advantage, especially when in the embarrassingly inept hands of government (or Microsoft, for that matter.)