Summary: How Microsoft and the partly Microsoft-owned Facebook are harming everyone's privacy far more than Google ever did

FOREIGN/GLOBAL intelligence is a big business and Facebook keeps getting more menacing as a surveillance operation, which is partly owned by Microsoft and ties into spyware such as Skype, relaying calls through the United States with its notorious data-hoarding NSA. A few days ago we explained why Microsoft's Xbox One should get seriously berated by consumers groups, especially after this "ambiguous claim from Phil Harrison that the Xbox One would have to ‘check in’ to Microsoft’s servers every 24 hours."

"Microsoft just needs a whipping boy, and it is desperate to stop Google one way of another (Google is crushing Microsoft's two biggest cash cows)."Other consoles do not have such spyware, but this is hardly the main privacy concern here.

Xbox One has spying capabilities, which Microsoft patents already reveal, as they have for years. Pamela Jones called these "Three things I detest all in one noxious bundle: having my privacy invaded, method patents, and Microsoft. Here's the patent application, and it includes this creepy sentence: "The computing system 102 may be configured to track the viewing behaviors of one or more viewers. The computing system 102 may then compile one or more user-specific reports of the viewing behaviors, and send the user-specific reports to a remote device to determine whether the user-viewing goal has been met. If the viewing goal has been met, an award may be granted to the viewer." And Microsoft complains to regulatory bodies about Google privacy issues? This is 1984 on steroids. A device in your house that watches you watching it and judges your conduct."

Here is some more news of interest about Facebook and Microsoft:

• Here's How Facebook Will Invade Your TV with Product Placement





• German Official: Xbox One Spying Capabilities a "Twisted Nightmare"

It is stuff like that which helps remind us Google is not worst when it comes to privacy. Fog Computing is privacy-infringing. Google is big in Fog Computing. But it doesn't mean that Google alone is privacy-infringing. The company behind anti-Google complaints (with help from Facebook) is far ahead of Google when it comes to spying. Even its desktop software is spying on users.

Microsoft members of staff (working as media moles, e.g. Mr. Perlow) and corrupting PR agencies have been chastising only Google for projects like Google Glass (which I can acknowledge raises privacy concerns), but they are doing after small violations of privacy, distracting from Microsoft's own limitless surveillance. Microsoft just needs a whipping boy, and it is desperate to stop Google one way of another (Google is crushing Microsoft's two biggest cash cows). ⬆