

Cablegate: Microsoft spied for USA - pitiburi
http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=06CARACAS1778&q=microsoft%20venezuela

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doublextremevil
The cable says " Microsoft's General Manager, Gonzalo Fernandez (protect),
showed EconOff an internal PDVSA memo which claimed that all U.S. software
companies had a "back door" mechanism whereby the U.S. government could at any
time access information, citing the supposed CALEA Law (United States Law of
Assistance in Communications for Security Systems)." This seems fishy to me

~~~
pitiburi
Many different things on that are fishy... The claims that the Microsoft GM
did are at the very best, completely inexact.... But the thing is, Microsoft
got access to internal documents of one of the biggest foreign companies in
the world, and went to the USA embassy with that information. Scary -and
illegal-.

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tzs
What is illegal about it? That's wasn't made clear in the memo.

~~~
pitiburi
Those internal documents are property of PDVSA; it even say so in each of
those internal documents, that the information is confidential and property of
PDVSA. Microsoft is not legally allowed to get the memos -which is not clear
if they did through backdoors in the software or just with spies inside the
company-. And of course, is not allowed to pass/use that information.

~~~
kahirsch
> Those internal documents are property of PDVSA; it even say so in each of
> those internal documents, that the information is confidential and property
> of PDVSA

I have no idea about Venezuelan law, but in the U.S., that's more of a
statement of intent than a legally dispositive statement. Try this google
search:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=this+document+is+confidential...](http://www.google.com/search?q=this+document+is+confidential+and+proprietary)

Am I breaking the law by reading those?

A search for "internal PDVSA memo" shows that journalists inside and outside
Venezuela have published information from them before, so maybe the law is not
so different there.

> which is not clear if they did through backdoors in the software or just
> with spies inside the company

Well, probably somebody emailed it to him with a comment like "Is there any
truth to this?" or "Any comment?" or "You might be interested in this." I
suppose you could call them "spies", but I doubt they got compensated for it!

------
thirsteh
"According to Microsoft, no government in the world has successfully used
Linux for large operations (Brazil and Cuba reportedly attempted this, but
then abandoned the effort)."

:)

