Background noting Microsoft now owns Skype:
The 15-JULY-2013 Bruce Schneier CRYPTO-GRAM email report is full of incredible new revelations of NSA (and other) spying and I've only focused on Skype in this posting.
For those who don't know who Bruce Schneier is:
Following is a copy'n'paste of just the "New Details on Skype Eavesdropping" portion of this month's l-o-n-g newsletter which is available in its entirety at Bruce's website (above URL). You can also subscribe and receive the CryptoGram email on the 15th of every month [ever since 15-MAY-1998 as I have].
This article, on the cozy relationship between the commercial personal-data industry and the intelligence industry, has new information on the security of Skype.
Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.
Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011.
A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined Prism on Feb. 6, 2011.
Reread that Skype denial from last July, knowing that at the time the company knew that they were giving the NSA access to customer communications. Notice how it is precisely worded to be technically accurate, yet leave the reader with the wrong conclusion. This is where we are with all the tech companies right now; we can't trust their denials, just as we can't trust the NSA -- or the FBI -- when it denies programs, capabilities, or practices.
Back in January, we wondered whom Skype lets spy on their users. Now we know.
The article quoted:
Skype's denial:
We can't trust the NSA:
My post from last January: