Tools and Weapons: The Promise and The Peril of the Digital Age

by Brad Smith

When email was still a rarity, these new warrants and gag orders were few and far between. But once the internet exploded and data center campuses emerged with hundreds of thousands of computers, life became far more complex. Today, twenty-five full-time employees—compliance experts, lawyers, engineers, and security professionals—make up our Law Enforcement and National Security team. They work with broad support provided by numerous law firms around the world, and they’re known across Microsoft as the LENS team. Their mission is straightforward: to review and respond globally to law enforcement requests under the laws of different countries and in accordance with our contractual obligations to our customers. This is no small task. The LENS team operates from seven locations in six countries on three continents. During a typical year, they address more than fifty thousand warrants and subpoenas from more than seventy-five countries.5 Only 3 percent of these demands are for content. In most cases, authorities are looking for IP addresses, contact lists, and user registration data.