Microsoft is financing US surveillance.

Microsoft is quietly becoming a significant player when it comes to providing Big Brother software to US security forces.
Apparently it is a big backer of an association which sells surveillance tech to police departments in a weird money loop which supports the sale of some of its snooping software.
The National Fusion Center Association provides fusion architecture and it runs Microsoft Fusion Core software.
Fusion centers were jointly created between 2003 and 2007 under the US Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Justice Programs in the US Department of Justice. They are supposed to promote information sharing between agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), US Department of Justice, US military, and state- and local government.
However, a recent bipartisan Senate investigation found that fusion centres were 'useless' in countering terrorism, but were very good when it came to violating the privacy and civil liberties of US citizens.
According to Network World Microsoft helps pay for fusion centers which give out grants to police departments for new surveillance technologies.
Microsoft is making a killing selling its Fusion Core Solution which according to the box automates the collection, intake, workflow management, collaborative analysis, data visualisation, dissemination, auditing, and capture of business-performance metrics.
The Fusion Core Solution was "jointly developed" by "Microsoft and Environmental Systems Research Institute" (ESRI).
To be fair, Vole is not the only one which funds fusion centers. They also get cash from ESRI, Thomson-Reuters, Mutualink and other firms that want to do business with them.
But Network World claims that this is just one of the ways that Vole is quietly becoming one of the world's largest intelligence solution providers.
If you click on the link, you'll notice it leads to Microsoft. That's because Bill Gate's Company helps fund these centers, in return for their continued business.
In fact, Microsoft helped fund and set up the NYPD's massive surveillance apparatus — The 'integrated intelligence solutions for police departments and security agencies.'
According to Fast Company, "Microsoft has quietly become one of the world's largest providers of integrated intelligence solutions for police departments and security agencies."
http://news.techeye.net/security/microsoft-finances-us-surveillance
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-it-looks-like-when-the-dhs-enters-you-into-one-of-its-creepy-data-centers-2012-11
I covered this subject in October "Microsoft funding allows police to acquire license plate scanners & spy gear from the National Fusion Center Association."
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2012/10/license-plate-scanners-how-police-are.html