In response to the news that Microsoft has denied it has ever been asked to plant a snooping backdoor into its products, Tim Erlin, director of security and risk at Tripwire comments:
“If Microsoft has been asked to enable access for surveillance, it’s unlikely that Charney would provide an entirely truthful answer in this context. The reality of government surveillance is not as simple as secret backdoors. If a very large Microsoft customer requested a feature to enable more effective security in their environment, and made that request contingent on a large purchase, would Microsoft say no? If that feature were also useful for capturing data in other contexts, would that be a backdoor? The recent research published around Apple’s iOS diagnostic capabilities sits in a similarly blurry position. Unfortunately, with the topic of government surveillance we’re often left with questions and wild conspiracies rather than facts. Two years ago the idea that the NSA had compromised encryption standards seemed far-fetched.”