So you want to use a free service where the facilitating corporation has an obligation to uphold to the standards outlined in their terms of service...without actually looking at it? Are they suppose to guess what's stored?

I mean, I get it, you don't want strangers at an evil corporation looking through your stuff...then don't store it there then complain about it when you get caught...or complain that they shouldn't be looking through your stuff.

The expectation of privacy on anything you put online is a false one.

It's also foolish to expect a crime free society, but that doesn't excuse the robber.

It does not indeed, but one is wise to not get pissed off when privacy is breached. It's fighting the current, and hopeless.

Much wiser is to not upload anything anywhere that you would not like to see posted publicly or read by someone; or at least strongly encrypt stuff and deal with the inconveniences that it brings.

My point is not that privacy breaches are excusable, rather that they will happen eventually, even if privacy was promised/assumed/implied.

Exactly. Like Google peeping into your inbox.

Hyperbole much? They seem to be using a automated scanning program to flag content. Didn't Google do something similar that became a big issue on HN?

Not hyperbole. There's a legal concept in the USA of "common carrier", holding an agent transferring information not accountable for the information transferred. As in: Verizon is not a culpable party if you use their cellular network to arrange a capital (or other) crime.

By stating content limitations in the EULA, and by actively searching for violations, MS is now legally culpable for content which is in criminal violation of the law.

Whether they are prosecuted may be a different story, but the legal culpability remains.

My mother taught me at a young age that "they did it too" is not a valid excuse.

> They seem to be using a automated scanning program to flag content.

And when the content gets flagged, what do you think happens next? Don't you think that, at some level, there will be a human involved?

Yes, it's not the flagging that bothers me. An inability to upload certain files the computer doesn't like is annoying at best. But the chance that they will go around humanly inspecting my files based on that? Dealbreaker.

Can you cite a source regarding the human involvement? I don't recall ever hearing about that. All the previous stories just indicated that the account shutdown was due to an automated scan.