More examples of the tech monster shitting on our rights and apologizing to no one. Remember this when the shills astroturfing the planet try to convince you corruption isn't real.
ITT we blame a software company for the sham practices and requirements of intelligence agencies.
Yes in any responsible system, there would be mandatory access controls and default access limits, but I can 100% guarantee you that the reason these systems don't have those (and the ones described by Snowden don't either) is because the intelligence agencies don't want them. They want it to be easy for their employees and contractors to break the pretend security that pretends to protect our privacy.
Knowing this, it's infuriating they would point the finger at anyone else. Will someone please remind me why we even need intelligence agencies?
When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the hardware space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software space (Oracle, SAP, etc.) and in the Services space (Accenture, PwC, KPMG, etc.) employees still had to complete annual legal training that was very similar to what was described in the post.
Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is going to tell their employees not to say, "our goal is to crush our competitors, dominate the market, and hear the lamentation of their women." Instead they will tell their employees to focus on making life better for their customers. It's a much healthier way for product managers to focus, and what you might do if the goal is "crush/dominate the competition" is not the same than if the goal is delight the customer. So it's not just a messaging strategy to prevent embarassing e-mails from coming out at trial; it's a business strategy, too.