Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency (NSA) to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
After digging into Microsoft’s Windows 8, I became very alarmed that the Start Screen was reporting back to Microsoft any third party software installation. A number of people wrote and said I was being too cautious and that all software phoned home. But Windows 8 was different. The Start Screen was pretending to protect the user by analyzing any software installed to make sure it did not contain a virus. Then NASA announce it was dumping Windows as an operating system seeking a more “stable” platform. In truth, Microsoft is so in bed with the NSA, the secret entries into the operating system can be discovered by real hackers and you are shit out of luck.
It appears that we now need an alternative to Microsoft, which will prove to be a giant short. They have forgotten that not all data is criminal and perhaps we simply don’t want others knowing what we are doing. Microsoft is acting like Investment Banks who simply prey upon their customers. This is outrageous conduct and the entire board of directors should not just be thrown out, they should be charged with criminal fraud upon all customers. This is despicable conduct on the part of any company.
Personally, I wish I had the influence people attribute to me for I would short the hell out Microsoft and drive it into the ground. Unfortunately, the model disagrees. Nonetheless, Microsoft peaked in 1999 with the low in gold. It has been unable to sustain any impressive rally and management is so concerned about helping the NSA, they have forgotten their shareholders. The chart pattern is not bullish and it would now take an annual closing above $52 to generate a buy signal. However, an annual closing below the Yearly Bearish Reversal at $20.17 will be following by a collapse to the $14-$10 level. This year must close above $32.50 just to stabilize. Failure to do that and this stock is dying. It is indicative of the shenanigans going on at Microsoft that this stock has FAILED to keep pace with the US share market in general.
The golden rule of trading – WHAT WILL NOT GO UP WHEN THE CYCLE POINTS UP – GOES DOWN TWICE AS HARD WHEN THE CYCLE DECLINES. Anyone looking for form competition to Microsoft, the chart pattern shows this company is slowing dying. The Guardian reported:
Microsoft has taken one of the better ‘messenger’ programs, Skype, that was a few years ago secure, now turned it into a video recorder for the NSA. When it started, and even when owned by eBay, it used a collection of ‘peer-to-peer’ super nodes which were basically the users systems to route calls etc with no central management. This gave it extra redundancy as there was no single point of failure, or point to ‘tap’. When Microsoft took this over it changed this to use thousands of servers run by Microsoft – centrally managed thus much easier to tap and share.
One of the strongest methods around this is the use of PGP encryption as we have discussed before – the fundamentals for this are built into systems like Dropbox and message services for mobiles, like Wickr (https://www.mywickr.com/en/index.php) – unfortunately this is only for the iPhone at the moment but as we have seen there are similar ones available for the Android as well. Android, being an open source platform, has much more scrutiny from people rather than the proprietry iOS platform.
Voice can be encrypted with services like cellcrypt which basically uses the IP channel as well as voice to ‘wrap’ everything
While most of this is not a concern for the average ‘Joe’ who is going about their daily business it is those that are involved in anything sensitive that worry – if the NSA is capturing everything and their systems are not secure, whether it is from cyber security attacks or simply the human factor where people walk out the door with the type of information Snowden appears to have access to.
Anyone wonder why they need such vast storage. Everything they collect is being stored and it has nothing to do with terrorism. Politicians defending the NSA are more likely than not being blackmailed. They are storing everything and it is available to ensure you have paid everything they think you might ever owe.
