4 ms·

A couple of years ago at a Linux conference in Germany I had a discussion with a Microsoft employee at their booth. At that time I was a 'hardcore' linux user w

A couple of years ago at a Linux conference in Germany I had a discussion with a Microsoft employee at their booth. At that time I was a 'hardcore' linux user with no trust in Microsoft at all. The discussion with the employee went like this: Me: "Hello. Could you tell me what Microsoft is doing at this Linux conference? I honestly want to know that." Him: "We are here to show how our products can work well together with Linux related products." Me: "Why would I as a Linux user use Windows or any other product from you? We all know that you spy on me - at least indirectly." Him: "Oh no. You are misinformed. We have a lot of business customers with very sensitive data. Can you imagine what would happen to us if they found out that we spy on them? Business users are very sensitive in that area. We were screwed. And we do not spy on regular users as well. You may also know that this would be totally illegal according to German law." Me: "So you are saying that you do not spy on businesses or other kind of users of your products?" Him: "Yes! We were screwed otherwise!" *giggle* He had a smile on his face for the whole discussion. Maybe because he had this discussion with those paranoid Linux users for the last couple of days of the conference. Paranoid! Microsoft is so screwed guys. Edit: I was not rude to this guy. We had a beer together later that day. I am sure he did not know anything about PRISM and was just doing his job.

duiker101 13y ago
To me seems you were just kinda rude to some guy that was getting paid to do his job.
- quantumpotato_ 13y ago
  To his job.. and lie?
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    A random Joe employee isn't going to know the details of a government backdoor (at least I'd hope so)
    - robryan 13y ago
      If companies can later claim that their employees statements weren't properly informed what is to stop companies making any claims they want via their lower level employees.
      - josephlord 13y ago
        The company and those with the information can still be culpable but the salesperson on the frontline isn't to blame unless they have a clue. What they say is still said by the company and the company should still be liable for harm caused by any of the untruths told on their behalf because the company does know even if the individual does not.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  Indeed the guy most certainly didn't know shit. On the other hand, rude or not, Lina turned out to be right and the MS-guy turned out to be ignorant of the type of company he was working for, as well as defending. Additionally these so-called "paranoid" questions didn't came out of thin air either. 10-15 years ago I also was very distrusting of Microsoft and what they were doing (there was a lot of anti-trust going on ...). But somehow they starting doing a few things right, wrote some good software and OS in the mean time and they "regained my trust" to the point I'd speak out against senseless M$-bashing, and perceive it as something childish. Well, that I am no longer going to do, lest I have to eat my words. That "trust" is completely gone, and I feel kind of foolish for believing it existed in the first place, "trust" is a kind of thing that happens between two persons, not between a person and a gigantic corporation. The latter is too volatile, there can be no build up or breakage, it's every moment again different, dependent on who is in charge and which individual personalities are involved in a decision. Rationally, one instant snapshot cannot make or break the trust of the next one. I do feel kind of foolish. I'm typing this on Win7, planning to install Linux for a while now, but I had some crazy wild ideas for a dual-boot scenario in mind that I never got around to and everything just worked so there was no hurry. Before next week I'll be back on Linux, maybe even sooner.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    > to the point I'd speak out against senseless M$-bashing Senseless bashing - including intentional miss-$pellings and holding one company (Microsoft) to different standards to others (Facebook, Google, Apple) is still childish. However, not all bashing is senseless - Microsoft has a lot of explaining to do. Sure, so do Facebook, Google and Apple but that doesn't let MS off the hook. It makes the case for installing a Linux instead a lot stronger.
- dspillett 13y ago
  His job was to represent Microsoft, which involves answering questions (to the best of his ability given the access to information that he has). As long as the questions were not worded or spoken in an unnecessarily pointed/aggressive manner I really can't see any reason to call the question asker rude. "It confuses me to find you here, could you please explain so I can fill in the blanks in my knowledge about your company" seems a perfectly valid question to ask of a company representative, and raising a security concern for said rep to respond to is valid too. You can't expect a show rep to know about anything like prism though - that information would have been "classified" and available only to those well above his pay grade.
hkmurakami 13y ago
well as far as he knew he was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help him Steve Ballmer.
kayoone 13y ago
A couple of years ago some microsoft sales employee probably didnt know about any of this. Also he is talking about mostly self-hosted MS services and i doubt the NSA really has access to that. Also found your conversation style to be quite cocky.
- toble 13y ago
  Yep. If someone represents company X at a conference, then consider yourself lucky if they are actually an employee - never mind an informed employee with a high standing in the organisation.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  Keep in mind this was in Germany and it doesn't read like native English. I.e. you're almost certainly reading a translation.
  - kayoone 13y ago
    Actually im german myself and by reading the translation i immediatly realized it was someone from germany translating that ;) But its more about the general tone that comes across a bit rude..Anyway OP clarified so its fine!
versk 13y ago
I keep hearing this on HN and reddit, but I think this is a mainly an echo-chamber effect. I'd say its far more likely that the vast majority of people don't actually care or realise what was happening, or they do realise and still don't care. I'd be surprised if the NSA leaks have any noticable impact on Microsoft's revenue.
- prawks 13y ago
  Pretty much. The truth is, unless your company serves Internet security careerists or people impassioned about Internet privacy, your customers do not care. The company I work for has absolutely no intent of dropping Microsoft products in lieu of the NSA leaks, even with large amounts of sensitive customer data. I can't imagine many large companies would. It would require such a vast amount of work it's unfathomable to even imagine most companies considering it unless they were about to lose nearly all of their customers. Caveat: customers do not care, at this stage in the game.
  - hobs 13y ago
    And serves them only. The other part is most corporations already have the feeling that the government is spying on them, and a public acknowledgement of the fact wont change their implementation details. Now, if you said "Microsoft is spying on you with your direct competition." that would make them sit up and take notice.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  Actually people in Europe do care and I would expect something to happen as a result. I don't expect MS to go out of business, but it wouldn't surprise me if they lost certain key projects over the next decade.
Ziomislaw 13y ago
paranoia is good :)
simonh 13y ago
The way I read your pseudo-transcript, I assumed the kind of spying you were talking about was MS spying on other businesses to the advantage of MS. I would imagine that's the kind of corporate espionage type spying the MS rep was talking about. PRISM is MS handing over data to external agencies, not MS spying on people themselves.
- nileshtrivedi 13y ago
  That is still to the advantage of MS - saving on legal costs of fighting those agencies like Yahoo did.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

duiker101 13y ago

To me seems you were just kinda rude to some guy that was getting paid to do his job.

quantumpotato_ 13y ago
To his job.. and lie?
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  A random Joe employee isn't going to know the details of a government backdoor (at least I'd hope so)
  - robryan 13y ago
    If companies can later claim that their employees statements weren't properly informed what is to stop companies making any claims they want via their lower level employees.
    - josephlord 13y ago
      The company and those with the information can still be culpable but the salesperson on the frontline isn't to blame unless they have a clue. What they say is still said by the company and the company should still be liable for harm caused by any of the untruths told on their behalf because the company does know even if the individual does not.
tripzilch 13y ago
Indeed the guy most certainly didn't know shit. On the other hand, rude or not, Lina turned out to be right and the MS-guy turned out to be ignorant of the type of company he was working for, as well as defending. Additionally these so-called "paranoid" questions didn't came out of thin air either. 10-15 years ago I also was very distrusting of Microsoft and what they were doing (there was a lot of anti-trust going on ...). But somehow they starting doing a few things right, wrote some good software and OS in the mean time and they "regained my trust" to the point I'd speak out against senseless M$-bashing, and perceive it as something childish. Well, that I am no longer going to do, lest I have to eat my words. That "trust" is completely gone, and I feel kind of foolish for believing it existed in the first place, "trust" is a kind of thing that happens between two persons, not between a person and a gigantic corporation. The latter is too volatile, there can be no build up or breakage, it's every moment again different, dependent on who is in charge and which individual personalities are involved in a decision. Rationally, one instant snapshot cannot make or break the trust of the next one. I do feel kind of foolish. I'm typing this on Win7, planning to install Linux for a while now, but I had some crazy wild ideas for a dual-boot scenario in mind that I never got around to and everything just worked so there was no hurry. Before next week I'll be back on Linux, maybe even sooner.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
  > to the point I'd speak out against senseless M$-bashing Senseless bashing - including intentional miss-$pellings and holding one company (Microsoft) to different standards to others (Facebook, Google, Apple) is still childish. However, not all bashing is senseless - Microsoft has a lot of explaining to do. Sure, so do Facebook, Google and Apple but that doesn't let MS off the hook. It makes the case for installing a Linux instead a lot stronger.
dspillett 13y ago
His job was to represent Microsoft, which involves answering questions (to the best of his ability given the access to information that he has). As long as the questions were not worded or spoken in an unnecessarily pointed/aggressive manner I really can't see any reason to call the question asker rude. "It confuses me to find you here, could you please explain so I can fill in the blanks in my knowledge about your company" seems a perfectly valid question to ask of a company representative, and raising a security concern for said rep to respond to is valid too. You can't expect a show rep to know about anything like prism though - that information would have been "classified" and available only to those well above his pay grade.

hkmurakami 13y ago

well as far as he knew he was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help him Steve Ballmer.

kayoone 13y ago

A couple of years ago some microsoft sales employee probably didnt know about any of this. Also he is talking about mostly self-hosted MS services and i doubt the NSA really has access to that. Also found your conversation style to be quite cocky.

toble 13y ago
Yep. If someone represents company X at a conference, then consider yourself lucky if they are actually an employee - never mind an informed employee with a high standing in the organisation.
flyinRyan 13y ago
Keep in mind this was in Germany and it doesn't read like native English. I.e. you're almost certainly reading a translation.
- kayoone 13y ago
  Actually im german myself and by reading the translation i immediatly realized it was someone from germany translating that ;) But its more about the general tone that comes across a bit rude..Anyway OP clarified so its fine!

versk 13y ago

I keep hearing this on HN and reddit, but I think this is a mainly an echo-chamber effect. I'd say its far more likely that the vast majority of people don't actually care or realise what was happening, or they do realise and still don't care. I'd be surprised if the NSA leaks have any noticable impact on Microsoft's revenue.

prawks 13y ago
Pretty much. The truth is, unless your company serves Internet security careerists or people impassioned about Internet privacy, your customers do not care. The company I work for has absolutely no intent of dropping Microsoft products in lieu of the NSA leaks, even with large amounts of sensitive customer data. I can't imagine many large companies would. It would require such a vast amount of work it's unfathomable to even imagine most companies considering it unless they were about to lose nearly all of their customers. Caveat: customers do not care, at this stage in the game.
- hobs 13y ago
  And serves them only. The other part is most corporations already have the feeling that the government is spying on them, and a public acknowledgement of the fact wont change their implementation details. Now, if you said "Microsoft is spying on you with your direct competition." that would make them sit up and take notice.
flyinRyan 13y ago
Actually people in Europe do care and I would expect something to happen as a result. I don't expect MS to go out of business, but it wouldn't surprise me if they lost certain key projects over the next decade.

Ziomislaw 13y ago

paranoia is good :)

simonh 13y ago

The way I read your pseudo-transcript, I assumed the kind of spying you were talking about was MS spying on other businesses to the advantage of MS. I would imagine that's the kind of corporate espionage type spying the MS rep was talking about. PRISM is MS handing over data to external agencies, not MS spying on people themselves.

nileshtrivedi 13y ago
That is still to the advantage of MS - saving on legal costs of fighting those agencies like Yahoo did.

deleted 13y ago

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