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The president of Microsoft says that online privacy has reached “a point of crisis”

2019-10-14T19:08:23.854Z


Microsoft President Brad Smith believes it is time for antitrust laws to be updated for the digital age.


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(CNNBusiness) - Microsoft President Brad Smith believes it is time for antitrust laws to be updated for the digital age.

Instead of the traditional method of calculating a company's market share, Smith said regulators should also consider the amount of consumer data a company owns when determining whether it is a monopoly. That method could mean problems for the other tech giants, such as Google and Facebook, which currently face antitrust investigations in the United States. It would probably have a minor effect on Microsoft itself.

But Smith says technology companies can learn from those investigations, and he knows it from experience. He was Microsoft's general advisor and trusted advisor to Bill Gates in the entire Microsoft antitrust case in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

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"I think you can think of Microsoft, the antitrust battles that began in the 1990s, as the first collision of technology with the modern world as we know it," Smith told CNN Poppy Harlow in a recent interview for Boss Files . “Microsoft had to change. We had to do more to listen to other people, understand their concerns, recognize their concerns and, ultimately, address them and that required a lot of changes. ”

A new method of measuring monopolies is just one of the ways in which Smith said he would like to see laws change so that big technologies are better regulated in the United States.

Those changes, Smith said, are necessary in light of the massive power and influence that technology now has on society, business and government. Smith explores that power in his new book, Tools and Weapons: the promise and danger of the digital age, co-written with Carol Ann Browne, senior director of external relations at Microsoft.

“I think there are many technology companies that were founded with the desire to do good for the world,” said Smith. “But I also believe that there is an opportunity for introspection, because it is one thing to do what you like to do and commit to doing good to the world. Another thing is to step back and ask the most difficult questions ... Are we doing it [good for the world]? Are there unintended consequences?

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Privacy

Both Smith and Apple CEO Tim Cook believe that privacy (or lack thereof) has reached a point of "crisis," "and it would benefit us to treat it that way," he said.

The solution, he said, should be twofold: federal regulators should pass a national privacy law, similar to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, as Smith has been advocating since 2005. The GDPR has It gives consumers the right to know when their personal data is collected online and how it will be used. While the United States waits for such federal law, Smith said that companies in the industry should start offering customers those rights on their own.

Smith recalled a December 2013 meeting that he and other technology executives had with then President Barack Obama, shortly after Edward Snowden leaked secret documents showing that the National Security Agency was spying on U.S. citizens. While executives worked with Obama on a government solution, the president told them that the technology industry would soon have to do the same.

"President Obama said: 'I suspect that the weapons will attack them," said Smith. "He continued that statement explaining that, in his opinion, which I think was also correct, the companies that were around the table had as many or more data about the American population, [about] people as consumers, than the government."

A positive point, he said, is a privacy law that will take effect in California in 2020 and that gives Internet users more control over their personal data, allowing them to opt out of sharing or selling their information to third parties, for example. Smith said he believes California's consumer privacy law will push most companies to change the way they handle user privacy even before federal legislation is passed.

  • UK lawmakers: Facebook intentionally and knowingly violated data privacy laws

Facial recognition

Another area in urgent need of regulation is facial recognition, said Smith.

On the one hand, facial recognition technology can be partial since it detects more accurately the faces of men and white people than those of others. Smith said it could also have potentially problematic implications for the capabilities of companies or governments to track people's movements, spending habits or participation in political movements, the kind of tracking that leaders in China may already be using. to monitor prodemocratic protesters in Hong Kong.

"If you only think about the right to assemble peacefully, which I think is at the center of democratic freedoms, you put it at risk: the future of mass surveillance that George Orwell imagined," said Smith.

Still, Microsoft is one of the many companies that work on the development of facial recognition technology, and Smith doesn't think it should be banned altogether.

The expert spoke about a bill that was proposed in the home state of Microsoft, Washington, that would have stipulated the use of facial recognition software by government agencies and would have required the manufacturers of such software to allow the testing of their products by third parties, as well as to establish privacy protections similar to GDPR. Microsoft urged lawmakers to pass that law, instead of another Washington bill that would have put a moratorium on the use of facial recognition by local and state governments.

"I really don't think a ban makes sense because you can't improve a technology if it can't be used, and it can't be used if it's banned," Smith said.

None of the Washington bills were approved, and Smith said he believes companies themselves should be selective about who they will provide their software until the regulations are in effect.

“There should be regulations and restrictions on its use. Companies should apply them voluntarily in this scenario, ”he said. “That is what we are doing… If this carries the risk of bias, we have rejected the agreements that do so. If you're going to put people's fundamental human rights at risk through mass surveillance, we should be saying no. ”

This type of cooperation between technology companies and regulators could be key to the future of the industry.

"I don't think it's enough to say that this is a problem that only the government should solve and that we, who created the technology, have no responsibility to address us," said Smith.

Microsoft

Source: cnnespanol

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