At a Thomson Reuters event on Sept. 13, Microsoft President Brad Smith said that, as technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, developers can no longer expect official privacy regulations to keep up, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“You have to know what you stand for,” he said. “You have to be prepared as a business to some degree to connect the courage of your convictions with a hardheaded focus on business.”
Mr. Smith described how, though Microsoft sees enormous promise in facial recognition, the company has been strict in how it and its clients — even government bodies — can use the technology. Microsoft has not been afraid to turn down clients whose values do not align with the company’s own, such as when one undisclosed nation requested to use the technology for mass surveillance.
“We thought it raised the risk of being used by a government to chill freedom of expression and prevent people from being able to assemble and protest,” he said, while also acknowledging the fine line tech companies must walk between protecting basic freedoms and encouraging innovation: “It’s hard to innovate if you can’t use something, and it’s hard to learn if you can’t innovate,” he said.
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