On June 23, 2011 a patent was approved allowing Microsoft or the government to “silently record” users’ internet communication and spy on them.
The patent is numbered 20,110,153,809 and is entitled Legal Intercept. It relates to modifying data to allow a recording agent to establish a communication session and then silently record the communication.
The fact that it has the title Legal Intercept is rather telling, as it means Microsoft has done the legal legwork to find out whether or not it could intercept information. Apparently it can, and now that it has a patent for the technology it can sue others who try to spy on people too.
The technology can be used by the US government or “one of its agencies”, according to the background information in the patent application to “monitor communications between telephone users” without giving any explanation.
Using this technology would require obtaining appropriate legal permission, which might not be that difficult for a government to acquire. What’s more interesting is that Microsoft has legally patented the technology.
It’s not clear if Microsoft has been approached by any governments about this technology, but it appears that it is setting up a potential spying technology that governments might want to license from it in the future.
http://intel-central.com/agents/microsoft-patents-government-internet-spying-technology/