“Did you know that there are more than 34,750 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for just 435 representatives and 100 senators? That's 64 lobbyists for each congressperson.”

--CIO.com

Summary: Microsoft goes to Washington again, hoping to influence the government it has already funded by offering secret agents ("law enforcement" with the pretext of "security") a free ride in datacentres

BRAD Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, gave $25,000 to the Obama inauguration (he essentially paid Obama) and although he is not making visits to the White House like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer do [1, 2, 3] (Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Steve Ballmer, and his wife Connie Snyder each gave $50,000 to Obama), he still goes to Washington, along with the legion of lobbyists.

"Gathering intelligence on enemy activities is critical to the success of the Slog."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Watch Brad Smith as he now lobbies the Obama administration for self gain (and potential harm to Google). He wants to allow access by officials, even on the very same week that we learn about the FBI breaking the law with illegal snoops (see references 1 and 2 at the bottom). Let's not forget that Microsoft assembles dossiers about its critics [1, 2, 3, 4] (Microsoft "dissidents", which it calls "enemies").

During a visit to Washington, D.C., this morning, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, asked the U.S. government to overhaul its laws to make cloud computing more secure and private, and to make it easier for cloud-computing providers and law enforcement officials to track down and prosecute online attackers.

So now we know who determines the law of the land. It's the corporations, not the supposedly-impartial and independent officials. ⬆ ____

1. FBI Broke Law Spying on Americans’ Phone Records, Post Reports
2. FBI broke law for years in phone record searches