Scheme –
set up before firm was purchased by Microsoft – allegedly eased access for US
law enforcement agencies
Skype, the
web-based communications company, reportedly set up a secret programme to make
it easier for US surveillance agencies to access customers' information.
The
programme, called Project Chess and first revealed by the New York Times on
Thursday, was said to have been established before Skype was bought by
Microsoft in 2011. Microsoft's links with US security are under intense
scrutiny following the Guardian's revelation of Prism, a surveillance program
run by the National Security Agency (NSA), that claimed "direct"
access to its servers and those of rivals including Apple, Facebook and Google.
Project
Chess was set up to explore the legal and technical issues involved in making
Skype's communications more readily available to law enforcement and security
officials, according to the Times. Only a handful of executives were aware of
the plan. The company did not immediately return a call for comment.
Last year
Skype denied reports that it had changed its software following the Microsoft
acquisition in order to allow law enforcement easier access to communications.
"Nothing could be more contrary to the Skype philosophy," Mark
Gillett, vice president of Microsoft's Skype division, said in a blog post.
According
to the Prism documents, Skype had been co-operating with the NSA's scheme since
February 2011, eight months before the software giant took it over. The
document gives little detail on the technical nature of that cooperation.
Microsoft declined to comment.
The news
comes as the tech firms are attempting to distance themselves from the Prism revelations.
All the firm's listed as participating in the Prism scheme have denied that
they give the NSA "direct" access to their servers, as claimed by the
slide presentation, and said that they only comply with legal requests made
through the courts.
But since
the story broke a more nuanced picture of how the tech firms work with the
surveillance authorities has emerged. The US authorities have become
increasingly interested in tech firms and its employees after initially
struggling to keep up with the shift to digital communications. NSA officials
have held high level talks with executives in the tech firms and are actively
recruiting in the tech community.
'That
information is how they make their money'
Shane
Harris, author of The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State, said
the NSA had a crisis in the late 1990s when it realised communication was
increasingly digital and it was falling behind in its powers to track that
data. "You can not overstate that without this data the NSA would be blind,"
he said.
The NSA
employs former valley executives, including Max Kelly, the former chief
security officer for Facebook, and has increasingly sought to hire people in
the hacker community. Former NSA director lieutenant general Kenneth Minihan
has taken the opposite tack and is helping create the next generation of tech
security firms. Minihan is managing director of Paladin Capital, a private
equity firm that has a fund dedicated to investing in homeland security.
Paladin also employs Dr Alf Andreassen, a former technical adviser for naval
warfare who was also for classified national programmes at AT&T and Bell
Laboratories.
Harris said
the ties were only likely to deepen as technology moves ever more of our
communications on line. He warned the move was likely to present more problems
for the tech firms as their consumers worry about their privacy. "It's
been fascinating for me listening to the push back from the tech
companies," said Harris.
Christopher
Soghoian, a senior policy analyst studying technological surveillance at the
American Civil Liberties Union, said the relationship between the tech giants
and the NSA has a fundamental – and ironic – flaw that guarantees the Prism
scandal is unlikely to be the last time tensions surface between the two.
The US
spying apparatus and Silicon Valley's top tech firms are basically in the same
business, collecting information on people, he said. "It's a weird
symbiotic relationship. It's not that Facebook and Google are trying to build a
surveillance system but they effectively have," he said. "If they
wanted to, Google and Facebook could use technology to tackle the issue,
anonymizing and deleting their customers' information. But that information is
how they make their money, so that is never going to happen."
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