The company says encryption and Perfect Forward Secrecy will become the default setting for users by the end of 2014.
The announcement follows similar efforts by Google, Twitter, Mozilla, Facebook and Yahoo. But Microsoft said it will also go several steps further, by making a contractual promise to business and government customers that it will alert them if it receives legal orders related to their data — and fight every gag order in court.
Microsoft will also open up so-called transparency centers, where governments can inspect its products code for back doors.
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“The idea that the government may be hacking into corporate data centers was a bit like an earthquake, sending shock waves across the tech sector,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “We concluded that we better assume that there might be such an attempt at Microsoft, or has already been.”
The end goal, Mr. Smith said, is to force would-be snoops to go to court — not hack into its data centers — for customers’ data. “We all want to live in a world that is safe and secure, but we also want to live in a country that is governed by the Constitution.”
Es kommt Bewegung in die Angelegenheit. Ob es nutzt? Vermutlich wenig, zuviel Vertrauen ist verspielt.