14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is one of the companies that defended Apple in the feud with the FBI over an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers, but at the same time, it also agrees that the government needs help in the fight against terrorism.
And in a statement at RSA Conference 2016 in San Francisco, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer, has explained that the Redmond-based tech giant is trying to find a balance between supporting the government and protecting users, even offering some examples to prove his point.
Smith has revealed that, following the Paris attacks in November 2015, the company was contacted by French authorities to provide information on the suspects. After carefully analyzing all demands, Microsoft decided to hand over the data, and it did so in less than 30 minutes.
“One thing we haven’t shared previously with the public is that in the days and weeks after the Paris terrorist attacks Microsoft received 14 lawful orders seeking content about terrorist suspects who were, at the point, at large in France and Belgium,” Smith has stated, according to TWE.
“We do play our role. But we also need to stand up for customers. And that’s what we’ve tried to do in other cases. We believe emphatically that when the Government wants to investigate a legitimate business and it wants information that belongs to that business, it should go to the business and serve a warrant or subpoena on the business and not go to the cloud services provider instead.”
Quick response in Charlie Hebdo case too
This isn’t the first time when Microsoft responds to government demands super-fast and is living proof that the software firm takes terrorism very seriously.
When the French government requested Microsoft information concerning the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the company complied in less than 45 minutes, again providing the investigators will all the necessary details.
And yet, Microsoft’s case is different from Apple’s, as the latter has to help the FBI break into an iPhone that was used by the attackers. Apple itself provided the FBI with information stored on its servers but is now refusing to take a step further and develop a backdoor for the device.