Microsoft's corporate affairs executive, Brad Smith, wrote an open letter detailing Microsoft's plan for the future, and in it he addressed the possibility of government spying being conducted through Microsoft products.

"Indeed, government snooping potentially now constitutes an 'advanced persistent threat' alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks. In light of these allegations, we've decided to take immediate and coordinated action in three areas: we are expanding encryption across our services; we are reinforcing legal protections for our customers' data; and we are enhancing the transparency of our software code, making it easier for customers to reassure themselves that our products do not contain back doors.

"This effor will include our major communications, productivity and developer services such as Outlook, Office 365, SkyDrive and Windows Azure, and will provide protection across the full lifecycle of customer-created content."

That's all well and good, but it's that third part about back doors that hits the hardest. The former measures wouldn't matter much if Microsoft continued to intentionally biuld in back doors that the government could use to get around encryptions and legal data protection - something that is still likely to happen in some form or another.