Microsoft is one of the companies that defended Apple in the fight against the FBI when the Fed asked the company to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. But at the same time, the company from Redmond is doing its best 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 2015 attacks in November, the company contacted the French authorities and gave information that he had of the suspects. A request was made by the French authorities and, after careful consideration of all the requests, Microsoft decided to deliver the data. The authorities had in their hands the data of 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 reports very well that giving a backdoor to the terrorist's device will give the FBI access to millions of iPhone in circulation. The company has not refused to give FBI access to information stored on its servers, but refuses to develop a backdoor on the device.
