14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is one of the companies that have often been involved in the NSA saga, with leaked documents that reached the web lately showing that Redmond collaborated with the US intelligence agencies, more or less on purpose, to provide details about its users.
While the company has always said that it only provided user information based on judge orders, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith explained at the GigaOM Structure conference in San Francisco that the NSA scandal actually affected its image and customers have less trust in the company.
Smith went on to explain that basically all tech companies have received the same hit in terms of consumer trust, so they all now have to work hard to repair what has been broken in the last couple of years.
“What we've seen since last June is a double-digit decline in people's trust in American tech companies in key places like Brussels and Berlin and Brasilia. This has put trust at risk,” Smith explained.
“The longer we wait or the less we do the worse the problem becomes. We are seeing other governments consider new procurement rules – procurement rules that could effectively freeze out US-based companies.”
Microsoft is the first company that asked the United States government to only seek information about the data stored on its local services and explained that data centers from other countries shouldn't be subject to its requests. What's more, Redmond has even decided to challenge such an order in court, with the FBI quickly giving up on the request after Microsoft asked for a judge to decide if it had to provide user details or not.
Smith explains that all these disputes are making more harm than good to all tech companies and, as time passes by and more such problems appear, everything is getting worse.
“Last fall people in Washington, including at the White House and Congress, had a view that this was an issue that needed to be addressed but might blow over. ... it is not blowing over ... in June of 2014 it is clear it is getting worse not better,” he pointed out.
“I do believe if we don't have a world where governments respect each other's world we're instead going to have a world where governments are tempted to keep American providers out,” he concluded, explaining that Microsoft stands by its opinion that the US government should only seek information from data centers located in the country.