Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption. According to top-secret documents given to the Guardian by Edward Snowden, Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal.

Before Redmond’s help the agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail. Microsoft also worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide.

Redmond worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases. Nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism. Prism data was routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the programme as a "team sport".

Looks like Microsoft is not going to come off well out of this. After all would you run software that tells your doings to the US spooks? (To annoy/disgust them? Ed)