Microsoft GC, Citing Serial Killer Tracking Case, Advocates Data Sharing

In a blog post promoting an international legal framework for cross-border surveillance and data-access rules, Microsoft’s top lawyer Brad Smith revealed he was once approached to help track down a serial killer by interpreting the suspect’s PC data. Smith said he was approached by police from “a Nordic country” in 1994 about a recovered hard drive they couldn’t make sense of, and under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty – an antiquated information sharing agreement – it would have taken months to get a U.S. legal order to secure Smith’s assistance. That episode, Smith wrote, “made clear the deficiencies of an antiquated international system that unintentionally sometimes puts public safety as risk.” But that doesn’t excuse unilateral actions by individual governments, Smith said: “we should create new processes that promote public safety by facilitating timely access to data while ensuring appropriate privacy protections for individuals. A new convention could achieve this by creating new processes that supplement the existing MLAT rules.”