10.23.15
Microsoft Massively Distributes Lies About Its Commitment to Privacy While Aiding NSA and Building Back Doors
Microsoft’s business model of snitching on customers has proven too costly
“Microsoft should put its own house in order on privacy rather than waving about a discredited blueprint as a model for others… This attempt to portray itself as a leader in consumer privacy is as preposterous as the notion that it has treated its competitors with high standards of business ethics.”
–Junkbusters President Jason Catlett
Summary: Amid losses of very large customers (and outright bans in some governments) Microsoft admits a collapse in revenue and proceeds to pretending — sometimes successfully — that it cares about privacy rather than a snitching operation (which it truly is, as Edward Snowden’s revelations serve to illustrate)
NOT a day goes by without Microsoft executives moving their mouths, i.e. lying. This post will quickly tackle some of the lastest lies.
“There is a Microsoft publicity stunt case going on, and journalists continue to quote the Microsoft executive who put together Microsoft’s patent war on Linux and recently got a promotion.”There is a Microsoft publicity stunt case going on, and journalists continue [1] to quote the Microsoft executive who put together Microsoft’s patent war on Linux and recently got a promotion. His goal is to portray Microsoft as a company that fights for people’s privacy when in fact Microsoft fought against people’s privacy like no other company, in collusion with the NSA. At the same time Microsoft is hypocritically using politicians and other companies to complain about and pressure Google [2], usually using the ‘privacy’ card.
IDG gave us a good laugh today. Microsoft’s shameless publicity stunt (lie) was promoted by Bill Snyder, who said he was a Microsoft shareholder while writing for IDG, and painted Microsoft as “activist” for privacy (seriously, don’t laugh). Here he goes:
Guess who’s leading the charge to replace the now-defunct Safe Harbor agreement with a new international framework to protect privacy? None other than Microsoft. Sounding more like an activist than the president and chief legal officer of the world’s largest software company, Brad Smith this week laid out a sweeping, four-point program in a blog post that explicitly values privacy over business and national security concerns.
If Microsoft is an “activist”, then Bill Gates is a “charity”, not a greedy profiteer who is marketing-conscious.
IDG has sadly been filled with a lot of Microsoft nonsense lately. Microsoft must have paid them a lot of money for Vista 10 advertising because this piece of malicious spyware sure needs a lot of advertising for people to foolishly adopt. 4 days ago we showed how yet another Microsoft MVP, Adam Bertram, had entered IDG. IDG’s tendency to hire Microsoft-connected people (sometimes existing employees, despite a conflict of interest) is not exactly news to us and here we see more Microsoft advertising from Bertram (one of our readers called it “spam”).
So anyway, Microsoft is now conveniently spreading (probably through its many PR agencies) the myth that Microsoft is fighting for people’s privacy. The matter of fact is, many businesses and even some of the world’s largest governments have been banning Microsoft software because of privacy violations. They adopt Free software and GNU/Linux instead, to the point where Microsoft’s revenue nosedives. Watch Microsoft Peter trying to spin very bad Microsoft results as “acceptable” (due to GNU/Linux and Free software growth, probably Android too), accentuating only positives and foolishly believing whatever Microsoft says despite its history of financial fraud. Accounting tricks are only to be assumed; that’s how Microsoft pretends to still be wealthy, e.g. when buying startups, using bogus figures, which is business as usual at Microsoft.
The Microsoft-led campaign to paint itself crusader for privacy really ought to stop or be stopped. Microsoft is trying to bamboozle overspending governments into deals that seriously compromise privacy and turn citizens into ‘products’ [3], with pretense that storing data locally somehow protects privacy. It doesn’t. Thankfully, over here in the UK, the British government ain’t buying it. It moves to real standards and real privacy (working from one’s own desktop with Free software, no so-called ‘cloud’) [4].
Microsoft claiming to fight for privacy is as ludicrous as claims that it “loves Linux”. People often believe that it’s acceptable to lie for one’s survival. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Microsoft wants US government to obey EU privacy laws
The fact that Microsoft is espousing what are quite radical ideas for a US company shows the depth of concern over the collapse of the Safe Harbour framework. Smith’s post appears at a time when the US and EU authorities are urgently trying to come up with a replacement for Safe Harbour, which must be in place by the end of January 2016, when enforcement actions by European data protection authorities will begin if nothing has been agreed. Yesterday, the US House of Representatives approved the Judicial Redress Act, which would extend certain US privacy protection rights to citizens of European countries. However, on its own that approach is probably insufficient to satisfy the CJEU’s stringent requirements for protections that are “essentially equivalent” to those under EU law.
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Microsoft Corporation Enlists Allies To Battle Alphabet Inc In Russia and China
To enhance its regional strength, Microsoft recently partnered with Chinese search engine Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) and Russian search engine Yandex (NASDAQ:YNDX). In each market, the respective search engine will become the default homepage and search engine for the new Edge browser in Windows 10. Both companies will also launch “universal” Windows 10 apps for services like search, maps, and cloud storage.
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Microsoft strikes major deal with NSW Government
The agreement, which Microsoft says is one of the largest of its kind in Australia, means NSW departments will be able to access a range of cloud and mobility services, including Microsoft Office 365, which are hosted in Microsoft’s local data centres.
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UK government deals blow to Microsoft with LibreOffice love-in
THE UK GOVERNMENT has dealt a blow to Microsoft with the announcement that it will adopt open source LibreOffice software across the public sector.
The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) announced this week that the government has entered into a deal with open source software company Collabora Productivity to equip public sector organisations with its GovOffice software, based on LibreOffice, given its “considerable cost savings” compared with the likes of Microsoft Office.
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