Honestly, they have big fish to fry. But they are watching "US" those who with "Microsoft Account" for sure. Also they have acquired Nokia for $7B which makes sense now that they want to migrate everyone to W8.1.
They dont care because pirate copies are a tiny fraction of the overall market,they only really care if you start selling thier stuff. Then they will pounce on you like a ton of bricks.
Exactly. M$ can't annhiliate piracy and it's the least of their concerns. Their main concern is the potential customers giving money to any other people. M$ coffers would be less richer every single day.
I dig that cheesy Microsoft logo they *taped* onto the back of the monitor for that screenshot. Good grief MS, never heard of photoshop? Someone tell Cleric to call them up since he loves photoshop so much.
Thank you, Yen, for those profoundly philosophical, thoughtful, and insightful remarks. It is quite true that the heavier weight of paranoia lies with those who feel that they must know all about their fellow human beings, rather than with those human beings who question why all must be known about them. The surveillance is the affirmative, extraordinary, and aggressive action. A few months ago I was extremely pessimistic, thinking that surveillance could only increase - probably in parallel with the technology that allows it to be done for so cheap and in such large measure. Not to mention because of the compliance of those corporate entities (and their corresponding governments) that employ such technology. But if M$/google really do file legal action against the US government, I now think there is some hope. It may be that capitalism (for a change) really can help here. M$ has to know that businesses/individuals are going to think twice about using cloud solutions like Office365 and Skydrive if every use of those solutions immediately puts generated content in peril. How can they sell such services and not be able to assure the user of exclusive control? And this also has to expand the market for the entrepreneur looking to sell end-to-end encryption solutions. Or perhaps a cell phone that can't be dumped (even if locked) by the police. These entrepreneurs probably can't be located in many countries, but the internet may allow such businesses to start anyway. I hope Windows 8 doesn't have surveillance features. I'd like to think that M$ wouldn't risk them being found because of the damage it would do to their business.
Unlike ip logs and data gathering, video surveillance actually takes a moderate amount of personnel power. There's a bunch of street cams that got taken down because they had to pay police to watch the videos. Even with editing features like fast forward, stop, zoom, etc... it comes down to paying some dude to do what he could already do by driving around. It's not the same for computer and internet stuff because a lot of the spying is done in the text we write and the ip addresses we connect to. That stuff is much easier to search, sort, and catalog. There won't really be pushback until people start getting convicted of things based on the data they collect. Right now, they're just doing it to threaten isps and find terrorists, but it's only a matter of time before people who have looser morals come into power.
Thanks for your reply. It's nice to see that others are engaged to think about this as well. The big philosophical question actually is: Is there need of privacy? Or does one need to have the right to hide something? Should there be things others don't have to know? Secrets. Yes! They are needed as long as one increases or tries to increase one's false idea of identity (ego). This always creates and causes suffer on others. It creates always offenders and victims. Anything caused due to the feeling of incompleteness and due to the idea one can achieve something at the expense of others. From the aspect of a 'ego-less' identity one actually doesn't need secrets and privacy. In fact the meaning of privacy and secret vanishes then. As long as humankind is identified through an ego and its needs we have to learn that nothing real can be achieved when feeding one's ego. Neither for the one who feeds nor for the one who is fed. Hence we need secrets and the right of privacy. Capital is an object of the ego, the ego is identified with capital. (my house, my car, my property) The only mechanism that would be 'helpful' is to recognize that less of it is actually far more. I store the data of my consumers / citizens (ego, capital) but I do not use it to make more out of them. This would be the first step of insight. But as long as there are statements like: We do nothing at all, your data never are stored. Or are you paranoid, we are harmless??? Or we store to guarantee YOUR safety. As long as I have to hear that we can never speak of any insight. The technology to asses video material has been improved much. Tag numbers of vehicles can be detected and read, faces of persons compared. The material is usually used to have evidence material after a crime has happened. It is useless to prevent crime, except their presence acts as a deterrent on potential criminals. With all those will to store a personal profile can be worked out. What is the person doing all the day, what are the preferred shops, items one visits / buys. Who are his friends? What are his interests, hobbies? Political orientation? Little offences? Got tickets already? And so on..... Compare it with your partner / wife / gf / bf relationship or whatever. Privacy and secrets don't matter as long as the ego sleeps or is resolved in wisdom. The will to give up secrets and privacy appears voluntarily, no enforcement. Why? Because they are actually NOT needed in a trusted and peaceful relationship. Both become more important (again) when the relationship / marriage breaks. The ego game of both reminds me then on what is happening. One tries to strengthen the own ego at the expense of the other naming those secrets and using it as weapon, as a matter of force. The entire drama (NSA and storage) is a drama of ego. And when 2 (with the same interests...lack of something....) find each others any measure / cooperation can be right to achieve their goal. (Industry and government)