Historiquement, Skype était une société de droit européen.
Sur le site de Skype, en 2011:
Skype was founded in 2003. It’s based in Luxembourg, with offices in Europe, the US and Asia. It’s owned by an investor group led by Silver Lake and which includes eBay Inc, Joltid Limited and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz.
Maintenant que la société Skype a été acquise par Microsoft, société américaine, tombe-t-elle sous la loi du Patriot Act ? Peut-on encore imaginer que nos conversations privées le sont vraiment ?
La lettre ouverte adressée à Skype mérite d’être lue, jusqu’à la dernière ligne.
Extrait:
Since Skype was acquired by Microsoft, both entities have refused to answer questions about exactly what kinds of user data can be intercepted, what user data is retained, or whether eavesdropping on Skype conversations may take place.[4] In 2012, the FBI stated that it had issued a warrant for chats going back to 2007, and that it had utilized those chats as evidence as the basis for criminal charges.[5] This contradicts Skype’s own policy stating that chats are retained for a maximum of 30 days.[6]
quoted from Bruce Schneier:
New Details on Skype Eavesdropping
This article, on the cozy relationship between the commercial
personal-data industry and the intelligence industry, has new
information on the security of Skype.
Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret
program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical
issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence
agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people
briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid
trouble with the intelligence agencies.
Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was
small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and
was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks
with the government over legal issues, said one of the people
briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago,
before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to
outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5
billion deal that was completed in October 2011.
A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent
changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of
Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It
appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with
the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the
company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a
former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the
Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined
Prism on Feb. 6, 2011.
Reread that Skype denial from last July, knowing that at the time the
company knew that they were giving the NSA access to customer
communications. Notice how it is precisely worded to be technically
accurate, yet leave the reader with the wrong conclusion. This is where
we are with all the tech companies right now; we can’t trust their
denials, just as we can’t trust the NSA — or the FBI — when it denies
programs, capabilities, or practices.
Back in January, we wondered whom Skype lets spy on their users. Now we
know.
The article quoted:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and-spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html
or http://tinyurl.com/qdl249l
Skype’s denial:
http://blogs.skype.com/2012/07/26/what-does-skypes-architecture-do/
We can’t trust the NSA:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/details_of_nsa.html
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/director-national-intelligences-word-games-explained-how-government-deceived
or http://tinyurl.com/ma7dk5j
https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/nsa-numbers/
http://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/06/11/nsa-surveillance-51264/
My post from last January:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/who_does_skype.html