SEVERAL weeks ago it was revealed that the CIA pays AT&T $10 million-plus to spy on call data. This is not a theory but a fact. NSA built a special relationship with Microsoft over a decade ago (before 9/11) and as we have shown repeatedly, Microsoft is willing to tolerate billions in losses running a service that asks people to type out their mind into a box (for Microsoft to mine, add to an artifically-intelligent profile, and then pass to the NSA). Given Microsoft's losses as a business (since 1998 at the very least, back when it lost $18 billion a year and also got caught engaging in financial fraud) one has to wonder what keeps the company going.

"Without Windows, espionage is harder."Over at CBS, Mary Jo Foley (Microsoft's Mouth) says that "Microsoft swears that Bing's no money pit," arguing that "under Microsoft's new reporting structure, the company isn't breaking out its Online Services profits and losses." As iophk put it, "a lot of things could really be hemorrhaging money, unseen below the surface."

European regulators have long observed the worrisome absence of search engine contenders in Europe. Making a profitable business that scans the entire Web is hard because the process is expensive and often it requires heavy subsidies -- a practice which is widely popular in the United States (a lot of profitable companies there are actually funded by taxpayers and are otherwise not viable). It is therefore not too far-fetched and it is definitely worth entertaining the possibility that unlawful and unconstitutional surveillance (for espionage, i.e. unfair advantage) is a 'necessary' crime which the NSA has been helping -- behind the scenes -- to keep afloat. Besides that, Microsoft Windows is a Trojan horse for the NSA. Without Windows, espionage is harder. ⬆