GitHub Copilot engineer here working on identity, safety, and privacy - no, even Microsoft doesn’t have access to all GitHub repos.
As years have passed since the acquisition “company” delineations have blurred a bit, but Microsoft employees still need to go through a separate onboarding process to access any GitHub company resources (internal repositories, telemetry, documentation, etc.), and then we have an additional layer of entitlements to gate and audit access to any sensitive data, including user data.
Very few employees within GitHub proper even have access to view private repositories, and in the rare cases where that’s done for legal or safety reasons the repository owner is notified.
There are currently no OpenAI employees with access to GitHub systems, so there’s about 4 layers of protection in place to prevent private repositories access. We do genuinely take user data protection and privacy seriously.
As years have passed since the acquisition “company” delineations have blurred a bit, but Microsoft employees still need to go through a separate onboarding process to access any GitHub company resources (internal repositories, telemetry, documentation, etc.), and then we have an additional layer of entitlements to gate and audit access to any sensitive data, including user data.
Very few employees within GitHub proper even have access to view private repositories, and in the rare cases where that’s done for legal or safety reasons the repository owner is notified.
There are currently no OpenAI employees with access to GitHub systems, so there’s about 4 layers of protection in place to prevent private repositories access. We do genuinely take user data protection and privacy seriously.