guardian.co.uk, Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Laura Poitras, Spencer Ackerman and Dominic Rushe, Thursday 11 July 2013
• Secret
files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism
•
Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch
• Skype
worked to enable Prism collection of video calls
• Company
says it is legally compelled to comply
 |
| Skype worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video and audio conversations. Photograph: Patrick Sinkel/AP |
Microsoft
has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users'
communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security
Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret
documents obtained by the Guardian.
The files
provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon
Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed
new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed
by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.
The
documents show that:
• Microsoft
helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency
would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
• The
agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com,
including Hotmail;
• The
company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism
to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million
users worldwide;
• Microsoft
also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand"
potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create
email aliases;
• Skype,
which was bought by Microsoft in October 2011, worked with intelligence
agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video of conversations as well as
audio;
• Material
collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA
document describing the program as a "team sport".
The latest
NSA revelations further expose the tensions between Silicon Valley and the
Obama administration. All the major tech firms are lobbying the government to
allow them to disclose more fully the extent and nature of their co-operation
with the NSA to meet their customers' privacy concerns. Privately, tech
executives are at pains to distance themselves from claims of collaboration and
teamwork given by the NSA documents, and insist the process is driven by legal
compulsion.
In a
statement, Microsoft said: "When we upgrade or update products we aren't
absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands."
The company reiterated its argument that it provides customer data "only
in response to government demands and we only ever comply with orders for
requests about specific accounts or identifiers".
In June,
the Guardian revealed that the NSA claimed to have "direct access"
through the Prism program to the systems of many major internet companies,
including Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo.
Blanket
orders from the secret surveillance court allow these communications to be
collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief
that the target is not a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time.
Targeting US citizens does require an individual warrant, but the NSA is able
to collect Americans' communications without a warrant if the target is a
foreign national located overseas.
Since
Prism's existence became public, Microsoft and the other companies listed on
the NSA documents as providers have denied all knowledge of the program and
insisted that the intelligence agencies do not have back doors into their
systems.
Microsoft's
latest marketing campaign, launched in April, emphasizes its commitment to
privacy with the slogan: "Your privacy is our priority."
Similarly,
Skype's privacy policy states: "Skype is committed to respecting your
privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data, traffic data and
communications content."
But
internal NSA newsletters, marked top secret, suggest the co-operation between
the intelligence community and the companies is deep and ongoing.
The latest
documents come from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division,
described by Snowden as the "crown jewel" of the agency. It is
responsible for all programs aimed at US communications systems through
corporate partnerships such as Prism.
The files
show that the NSA became concerned about the interception of encrypted chats on
Microsoft's Outlook.com portal from the moment the company began testing the
service in July last year.
Within five
months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a
solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chats
A
newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working
with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the issue.
"These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012."
Two months
later, in February this year, Microsoft officially launched the Outlook.com
portal.
Another
newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook
email. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails
will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption."
Microsoft's
co-operation was not limited to Outlook.com. An entry dated 8 April 2013
describes how the company worked "for many months" with the FBI –
which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley
on Prism – to allow Prism access without separate authorization to its cloud
storage service SkyDrive.
The
document describes how this access "means that analysts will no longer
have to make a special request to SSO for this – a process step that many
analysts may not have known about".
The NSA
explained that "this new capability will result in a much more complete
and timely collection response". It continued: "This success is the
result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking
and collection solution established."
A separate
entry identified another area for collaboration. "The FBI Data Intercept
Technology Unit (DITU) team is working with Microsoft to understand an
additional feature in Outlook.com which allows users to create email aliases,
which may affect our tasking processes."
The NSA has
devoted substantial efforts in the last two years to work with Microsoft to
ensure increased access to Skype, which has an estimated 663 million global
users.
One
document boasts that Prism monitoring of Skype video production has roughly
tripled since a new capability was added on 14 July 2012. "The audio
portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without
the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete 'picture',"
it says.
Eight
months before being bought by Microsoft, Skype joined the Prism program in
February 2011.
According
to the NSA documents, work had begun on smoothly integrating Skype into Prism
in November 2010, but it was not until 4 February 2011 that the company was
served with a directive to comply signed by the attorney general.
The NSA was
able to start tasking Skype communications the following day, and collection
began on 6 February. "Feedback indicated that a collected Skype call was
very clear and the metadata looked complete," the document stated,
praising the co-operation between NSA teams and the FBI. "Collaborative
teamwork was the key to the successful addition of another provider to the
Prism system."
ACLU
technology expert Chris Soghoian said the revelations would surprise many Skype
users. "In the past, Skype made affirmative promises to users about their
inability to perform wiretaps," he said. "It's hard to square
Microsoft's secret collaboration with the NSA with its high-profile efforts to
compete on privacy with Google."
The
information the NSA collects from Prism is routinely shared with both the FBI
and CIA. A 3 August 2012 newsletter describes how the NSA has recently expanded
sharing with the other two agencies.
The NSA,
the entry reveals, has even automated the sharing of aspects of Prism, using
software that "enables our partners to see which selectors [search terms]
the National Security Agency has tasked to Prism".
The
document continues: "The FBI and CIA then can request a copy of Prism
collection of any selector…" As a result, the author notes: "these two
activities underscore the point that Prism is a team sport!"
In its
statement to the Guardian, Microsoft said:
We have
clear principles which guide the response across our entire company to
government demands for customer information for both law enforcement and
national security issues. First, we take our commitments to our customers and
to compliance with applicable law very seriously, so we provide customer data
only in response to legal processes.
Second, our
compliance team examines all demands very closely, and we reject them if we
believe they aren't valid. Third, we only ever comply with orders about
specific accounts or identifiers, and we would not respond to the kind of
blanket orders discussed in the press over the past few weeks, as the volumes
documented in our most recent disclosure clearly illustrate.
Finally
when we upgrade or update products legal obligations may in some circumstances
require that we maintain the ability to provide information in response to a
law enforcement or national security request. There are aspects of this debate
that we wish we were able to discuss more freely. That's why we've argued for
additional transparency that would help everyone understand and debate these
important issues.
In a joint
statement, Shawn Turner, spokesman for the director of National Intelligence,
and Judith Emmel, spokeswoman for the NSA, said:
The
articles describe court-ordered surveillance – and a US company's efforts to
comply with these legally mandated requirements. The US operates its programs
under a strict oversight regime, with careful monitoring by the courts,
Congress and the Director of National Intelligence. Not all countries have
equivalent oversight requirements to protect civil liberties and privacy.
They added:
"In practice, US companies put energy, focus and commitment into
consistently protecting the privacy of their customers around the world, while
meeting their obligations under the laws of the US and other countries in which
they operate."
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