Ever since Edward Snowden broke the news of the NSA spying on US citizens beyond their legal scope, there has been a frenzy of espionage related conspiracy theories that have assaulted the internet. However many of them are becoming less and less far fetched as Snowden’s leaks continue to break.

In a recent development, it’s been revealed that the NSA dedicated a section of their spy force to listen to Xbox Live chat conversations, which almost certainly resulted in a barrage of immature trash talk, and likely very little illegal activity.

It seems that games such as GTA which “promote violence” or at least seem to often appear as hobbies of those who have a tendency towards criminality are a prime means of vetting potential threats. Microsoft has declined to comment on the NSA overseeing of their chat frequencies, which only furthers suspicion of their involvement.

It’s not only Xbox Live chat that has been under surveillance: World of Warcraft chats have apparently been flagged as well. Developers Blizzard asserted that they were unaware of any such surveillance taking place.

Source: Guardian

The last thing they needed was to be involved with the PRISM scandal that the NSA has been conducting worldwide.

However, general counsel & executive vice president of legal & corporate affairs at Microsoft Brad Smith has sought to clarify several things. He first assured that, “Microsoft does not provide any government with direct and unfettered access to our customer’s data. Microsoft only pulls and then provides the specific data mandated by the relevant legal demand.

“If a government wants customer data – including for national security purposes – it needs to follow applicable legal process, meaning it must serve us with a court order for content or subpoena for account information.

“We only respond to requests for specific accounts and identifiers. There is no blanket or indiscriminate access to Microsoft’s customer data. The aggregate data we have been able to publish shows clearly that only a tiny fraction – fractions of a percent – of our customers have ever been subject to a government demand related to criminal law or national security.”

Smith also stated that, “We have asked the Attorney General of the United States to personally take action to permit Microsoft and other companies to share publicly more complete information about how we handle national security requests for customer information.

“We believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees our freedom to share more information with the public, yet the Government is stopping us. For example, Government lawyers have yet to respond to the petition we filed in court on June 19, seeking permission to publish the volume of national security requests we have received. We hope the Attorney General can step in to change this situation.”

How much significance does this hold, considering officials have had no problem perjuring themselves in Congress when asked about whether United States citizens are under surveillance? We’ll soon found out in the coming months, but until then, Microsoft is working to defuse this issue as soon as possible.