Microsoft Hypocrisy?
This is a cosmetic PR exercise by Microsoft. James Bamford's well-documented book about the NSA, "The Shadow Factory", recounts how the NSA decided it had to move its data centre from the NSA's Maryland HQ to a location where the electricity supplies were cheaper and able to meet the NSA's huge power demand. The NSA chose a location in San Antonio, near NSA Texas, in 2005, but did not finally commit to moving there until 2007, when Microsoft formally announced its decision to build a large data centre about 7 miles from the proposed NSA site.
No great leap of the imagination is required to envisage a fibre-optic pipe between the two, which of course Microsoft would connect either voluntarily or under coercion from the government. It is also difficult to believe that that pipe would be one of the connections that Microsoft proposes to encrypt.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
