Microsoft's chief privacy adviser from 2002 to 2011 - Caspar Bowden - has lost his faith in Microsoft technology.
The NSA revelations have convinced him that Microsoft's software is not secure and he has not been carrying a mobile phone for two years.
Caspar Bowden has received the Winston award and is a specialist in the area of computer privacy.
During a conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, he stated that he did not know anything about Prism. This is hardly a compliment to Microsoft who did not inform their top privacy adviser regarding Prism.
Most people would suspect that the Prism program does have privacy issues...
"I don't trust Microsoft now," he said, adding that he only uses open source software where he can examine the underlying code. He also said he has not carried a mobile phone for two years.
But he does not stop there:
Bowden said the extent of the NSA's surveillance efforts – where it shares and gathers intelligence with the UK's GCHQ and intelligence agencies in Canada, New Zealand and Australia – was undermining democracy.
The long term implications are scary:
We're living through a transformation in surveillance power that's never been seen before on earth. And we don't know what type of government or leader will come to power next and exploit it. It could be the next president. It could be this one.
This has made the former MS executive a firm believer in open source.
Bowden's expertise is recognized by the EU too since he has been asked to produce a report where he is warning against putting information in the "clouds":
Mr. Bowden has written a report for the European Union, warning of the dangers of storing personal information on cloud services due to the possibility that US authorities could intercept all the information. He writes that the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act (FISAAA) allows US authorities to access private cloud data.
Does anyone remember the MS 2007 campaign:
Your privacy is our priority
By 2007 they had been collaborating in the Prism program for 7 years.....