President Brad Smith on why the company has sued the feds four
times in three years
By Jay Greene
REDMOND, Wash. -- Companies often try to steer clear of
conflicts with the government. But Microsoft Corp. is picking
fights with the government.
In the past three years, the software giant has sued the federal
government four times, challenging law-enforcement efforts to
secretly search customer data on servers at Microsoft's data
centers in the U.S. and elsewhere. Microsoft, like several other
tech companies, often receives federal demands for customer
information, such as emails, that include gag orders barring the
company from telling those customers the government looked at their
data.
Microsoft's most recent suit, filed in April against the Justice
Department, contests the constitutionality of preventing tech firms
from telling customers when federal agents have examined their
digital files.
Like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc., which have challenged the
government over similar issues, Microsoft has been hailed by
privacy activists and civil libertarians worried about government
overreach. The company has also faced criticism from law
enforcement that its actions could hamper criminal
investigations.
Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, is
the architect of the company's strategy to challenge the
government. Mr. Smith, who says he recognizes the importance of
government investigations, believes that indefinite gag orders
violate Microsoft's First Amendment right to inform customers about
searches of their files, and that secret searches violate the
Fourth Amendment requirement that the government give notice to
people when their property is being searched or seized.
The Wall Street Journal talked with Mr. Smith in his office at
Microsoft headquarters here about the company's strategy, and its
attempt to balance concerns about public safety with the desire to
protect customer privacy. Edited excerpts follow.
What's at stake?
WSJ: Microsoft has sued the federal government four times in the
past three years. Why?
MR. SMITH: These suits have all involved situations where we've
felt that the company's business and the interests of our customers
were at stake around security and privacy. They also involved
important issues of principle, including the right of people to
know what the government is doing in certain circumstances.
WSJ: Tell me about the decision-making process at Microsoft to
file the suits.
MR. SMITH: Before filing the lawsuit [in April], I shared the
thinking with three groups of people. First and foremost, Satya
Nadella, our CEO; our senior leadership team that meets every
Friday for half a day; and our board of directors. I made sure
people knew what our thinking was, what we were planning to do, and
welcomed feedback. In each case, everybody expressed a substantial
level of comfort and understanding with what we were doing.
It's important for us to use a blog to communicate externally
and internally. Our employees are going to find themselves needing
to make similar decisions in the future, or explaining these
decisions to our stakeholders, including our customers. We [also]
need to get our rationale down to 122 characters so it can be put
in a tweet that can be retweeted. The very last step is sitting
down and asking, "What is the heart and soul of what we're trying
to communicate? How do we get this down to 122 characters so we can
really explain it to the world?"
WSJ: Did anyone in the leadership say, "This is a step too
far?"
MR. SMITH: There wasn't a voice to that effect. In the most
recent case, we concluded that we were basically being left with no
choice. One of the challenges with these secrecy orders is that
they were being pursued across the country by 93 different U.S.
attorney's offices that, to a certain degree, make decisions in a
fragmented way. So we were constantly trying to hammer things out
with office after office and, not surprisingly when you have 93
different offices, eventually you start to encounter situations
where things break down.
These are issues we had tried to raise with the Justice
Department in Washington, D.C., over the last few years. They work
in an environment that has so many competing priorities that many
days we would find that our concerns just didn't make it high
enough on their list for effective action to be taken.
Consumer reaction
WSJ: Have you polled consumers on this issue?
MR. SMITH: We definitely have. We've done I would say on average
one or two consumer-oriented polls each year over the last few
years, since these issues first arose. And if there is a constant
point of almost universal consensus among the American public, it's
this: People feel fundamentally comfortable with the balance of
governmental power and individual rights that has existed in the
U.S. since the country was founded and information was put on
paper. And what people want is to see information that is stored
digitally in the cloud get the same kind of protection as
information that is written down and stored on paper.
WSJ: Some police groups came out against Microsoft. Are there
dangers from a public perception standpoint?
MR. SMITH: One needs to be prepared to accept some level of risk
to accomplish anything of significance. It behooves us to
communicate carefully. It's always important for us to acknowledge
that some of these issues involve competing values that are each
important in their own right. This isn't a battle of good versus
evil as much as it involves thinking through how we as a society
move to the cloud in a way that keeps our traditional values
intact.
Typically, ultimately, some middle ground needs to emerge. While
debates can start with two opposing people, they typically end with
a handshake.
WSJ: How did Microsoft work with law enforcement after the Paris
attacks?
MR. SMITH: Even while we fervently believe in privacy and are
prepared to go to court to disagree with our own government, we do
recognize that our industry has not only a role but a
responsibility to help keep the public safe.
In the wake of the Paris attacks last November, we did receive
14 lawful orders from the police in Paris and Brussels. And in all
14, we concluded they were lawful orders. We concluded that we had
the information the government was requesting and could turn it
over. And, in fact, we did turn it over with an average turnaround
time of under 30 minutes. There are days when people's lives are at
stake. And on those days it is our job to work hard to serve the
public in this broad way.
Mr. Greene is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in
Seattle. He can be reached at jay.greene@wsj.com.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 31, 2016 02:51 ET (06:51 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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