Microsoft tells FSB to listen in on Skype

Most people like Skype because it’s cheap. In Russia, like other countries with an overzealous security service, Skype is seen as a necessary tool by human rights activists, who count on it being free of nosy eavesdroppers. Now that might all change, thanks to Microsoft, which bought Skype for $8.5 billion last month.

“I would like to do that,” Microsoft Russia head Nikolai Pryanishnikov told Interfax when asked if he would hand over Skype’s encryption code to the FSB. He said that no such talks, however, were currently underway.

He said Microsoft’s strategy in Russia was “cooperation and partnership with the government.” “We want to develop our laboratory along with the FSB,” he said.

Last year, Microsoft came under fire in Russia for cooperating with the FSB on shady cases against activist groups. After the New York Times wrote this expose about the case against Baikal Environmental Wave, the company announced a policy shift and said it would work harder to protect NGOs.

Pryanishnikov’s statement is like an open invitation to the FSB. For ages, you couldn’t buy Blackberries here because the company that manufactures them refused to hand over the encryption code (a compromise was eventually reached and a limited number allowed to be sold).