“More than ever, the Internet is not some place in distant cyberspace, it is a place that defines what happens in the real world,” writes Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer, in an in-depth piece about the changing global landscape of information security.
“Our mission as a company is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” he writes. “If we’re going to empower every person, we need to protect every person. We need to ensure every individual and organization has the ability to use technology that they can trust.”
All of us, Smith says, “want and need to live in a world where governments can keep the public safe, and yet privacy and free expression are among the timeless values that also need to endure. We all need to live in a world where governments respect each other’s borders, but also a world with open markets and a global network. Certain principles span all of this, principles like transparency. The more that we can share, the more we can help advance all of these principles.”
The Internet “does need to be governed by laws – but they need to be good laws,” Smith says. “That is where our principles turn to commitments we have to governments, businesses and individuals.”
Suzanne Choney
Microsoft News Center Staff