Latest revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden expose the methods through which Internet corporation and software manufacturer Microsoft handed over user data to US National Security Agency (NSA).
According to the Guardian, the revelations show that Microsoft co-operated with NSA for its Prism program and helped NSA to circumvent the company's own encryption.
The deep and ongoing co-operation between Microsoft and NSA let the agency access to Outlook.com chats and to the conversations including video chats from the recently acquired Skype.
In light of the revelations, Microsoft said that it provides customer data 'only in response to government demands and they only comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers'.
However, according to the surveillance court orders, many of the internet companies including Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Skype, Microsoft and Apple are bound to disclose user data for security purpose and recently these companies have been lobbying the government to allow publishing their arguments against the Prism program.
According to the report, the revealed documents show that Microsoft working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal with interception of encrypted chats additionally, NSA had pre-encryption access to Outlook email as Prism collected the data prior to encryption.
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Microsoft also allowed Prism access to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, without separate authorization.
Shawn Turner, spokesman for the director of National Intelligence, and Judith Emmel, spokeswoman for the NSA, said that in practice, US companies put energy, focus and commitment into consistently protecting the privacy of their customers around the world, while meeting their obligations under the laws of the US and other countries in which they operate.
