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That 36-hour blank spot where Skype's login and authentication systems used to be may have been down for reasons beyond the official party line...but you have to believe the *truth* is out there.

Skype Outage Dials Up Conspiracy Theories

Not everyone has been satisfied with Skype's assertion that Microsoft's latest patch updates caused thousands of Skype users to logout and try to log back in at the same time, crushing Skype's login system.

Skype official types have blogged a couple of times that the long service outage was not due to an outside exploit or other malicious activity. Microsoft, for its part, has reacted with virtually a WTF to claims that for the first time ever a Windows update and restart sequence caused this kind of disruption across a peer-to-peer system that should withstand such activity.

Whenever there is controversy, people like to try and fit baffling circumstances into what they do understand. Conspiracy theories fill in the gaps where facts fear to tread, and that's where Jabari Zakiya's article at Free Software Magazine picks up the Skype outage thread:

"The Skype network has been a concern of government intelligence agencies since its inception because it provides a worldwide network of encrypted VoIP calls to potential “terrorists”. So how coincidental is it that 10 days after Bush signs into law a Bill giving the government authority to track foreign calls that go through U.S. networks that Skype, for the first time in its existence, undergoes a massive worldwide outage?

Zakiya refers to the signing of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), on Sunday, August 5th. Broad surveillance may be conducted without a warrant. If you don't think a telephonic service provider would willingly cooperate with such an invasion into the privacy of its users, the Washington Post and groups like the ACLU and EFF suggest you think again:

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that telecommunications companies assisted the government's warrantless surveillance program and were being sued as a result, an admission some legal experts say could complicate the government's bid to halt numerous lawsuits challenging the program's legality.

"[U]nder the president's program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us," Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in an interview with the El Paso Times published Wednesday.

Let us add a little fuel to the fire. In fiercely Democratic, or lower-case 'L' libertarian at best, Silicon Valley, eBay CEO Meg Whitman stands out as a Republican booster. EBay owns Skype, and certain Skype shareholders stand to make another $1.5 billion if Skype hit certain undisclosed milestones by 2009.

Who is to say that Skype didn't receive a little pressure to give the Bush Administration access to network traffic, above and beyond whatever the wiretaps at AT&T switching facilities could gather from the Internet?

It makes for a good conspiracy theory. The paranoid should consider Zakiya's suggestions of Zfone from PGP's legendary creator Phil Zimmermann, or the Asterisk or OpenWengo projects.

EiL eht eveileB.