Always and everywhere, surveillance is ultimately about extortion.
Your phone's nav track is remarkably cheap to obtain from a variety of sources. So is your spouse's, and your siblings', children's, parents', business partners', lawyer's, boss's, boss's family. Dirt on any of them can be used against you. Sometimes, dirt on a judge the judge's family serves as well.
Whenever you see an incomprehensible public action, such as a Senator suddenly resigning, or a billionaire let off from a child-molestation charge, know that behind-the-scenes activity, likely involving extortion, likely based on dragnet surveillance, is involved.
Prosecutors use it to get guilty pleas to charges they could not get a conviction on. Cops and spooks use it to recruit a network of informants.
The only protection any of us have is actual privacy, for ourselves and everyone around us, which requires shutting down pervasive surveillance systems.
Microsoft is very far from alone in employing this sort of dirty trick. They differ mainly in how open they are about it. Evidently they don't feel much risk of it biting them back.
Different organizations differ in how much they use dirty tricks. It depends overwhelmingly on what the top dog at each thinks of it. People will always blame an overambitious underling, but underlings can't do it without at least tacit approval from above.
Your phone's nav track is remarkably cheap to obtain from a variety of sources. So is your spouse's, and your siblings', children's, parents', business partners', lawyer's, boss's, boss's family. Dirt on any of them can be used against you. Sometimes, dirt on a judge the judge's family serves as well.
Whenever you see an incomprehensible public action, such as a Senator suddenly resigning, or a billionaire let off from a child-molestation charge, know that behind-the-scenes activity, likely involving extortion, likely based on dragnet surveillance, is involved.
Prosecutors use it to get guilty pleas to charges they could not get a conviction on. Cops and spooks use it to recruit a network of informants.
The only protection any of us have is actual privacy, for ourselves and everyone around us, which requires shutting down pervasive surveillance systems.
Microsoft is very far from alone in employing this sort of dirty trick. They differ mainly in how open they are about it. Evidently they don't feel much risk of it biting them back.
Different organizations differ in how much they use dirty tricks. It depends overwhelmingly on what the top dog at each thinks of it. People will always blame an overambitious underling, but underlings can't do it without at least tacit approval from above.