Microsoft has just opened a Transparency Center in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the European Union, to – in the company’s own words – “enable governments to review and assess the source code of Microsoft products and to access important security information in a secure environment”.
The opening of this site follows Microsoft’s first opening of this kind of facility in Redmond last year, and will be available to governments that have registered with Microsoft’s Government Security Program. This program enables government officials to see information including that about the company’s intelligence and cloud services.
Especially crucially, the new center will enable many European governments to easily see the source code for several of Microsoft’s enterprise products to help reassure them that, contrary to accusations previously leveled at but denied by the company, Microsoft products have no hidden ‘back doors’.
Microsoft has revealed its intentions to open more facilities like this in Europe, the Americas and Asia, and make possible inspection of the source codes of further Microsoft products.
