Η Microsoft είναι μία από τις εταιρείες που υπερασπίστηκε την Apple στη μάχη κατά του FBI, όταν οι Ομοσπονδιακοί ζήτησαν από την εταιρεία να ξεκλειδώσει ένα iPhone που χρησιμοποιήθηκε από έναν από τους επιτιθέμενους στο San Bernardino. But at the same time, the company from Redmond is doing everything to help the US government (and not only) in the fight against terrorism.
And in a statement at the RSA 2016 Conference in San Francisco, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft and Director of the Company's Legal Department, explained that the company is trying to strike a balance between supporting the government and protecting its users. He then gave some examples to prove it.
Mr Smith revealed that, following the Paris attacks in November 2015, the company had contacted the French authorities and given that information had for the suspects. A request was made by the French authorities and after careful consideration of all requests, Microsoft decided to deliver the data. Authorities had the data of the suspects in less than 30 minutes.
"One thing we have not mentioned before is the days and weeks following the terrorist attacks in Paris. "Microsoft has received 14 legitimate requests for data on suspected terrorists in France and Belgium," Smith said.
"We helped. But we must also stand by our customers. This is what we have tried to do in other cases. We strongly believe that when the government wants to investigate a legitimate business and wants information that belongs to that business, it should have a warrant or summons for the business and not go to the cloud service provider instead. ”
This is not the first time Microsoft has responded directly to government requests. As the company seems to take the terrorist attacks very seriously.
When the French government asked Microsoft for information on the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the company had them gave it in less than 45 minutes.
But it seems that Microsoft's case is very different from Apple's. Apple quite rightly states that granting a backdoor cuts in device of the terrorist, will give the FBI access to millions of iPhones in circulation. The company has not denied giving the FBI access to information stored on its servers, but it denies developing a backdoor on the device.
