Microsoft's top legal gun decries privacy 'arms race'

 The conflict between snooping governments seeking to defeat encryption and users demanding ever more robust privacy tools has turned into an arms race—and it’s time for arms control talks, Microsoft’s general counsel said on Tuesday.

Resolving that conflict requires a new consensus on how to balance public safety and personal privacy, Brad Smith said in a forum at Harvard Law School. “Ultimately there are only two ways to better protect peoples privacy: stronger technology or better laws,” he said.

In an expansive conversation about privacy and rebuilding trust in technology after revelations of widespread government spying, Smith talked about Microsoft’s first “sea-change” moment. It came in the year after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, when Microsoft, among other Internet companies and telcos, was asked to voluntarily share data with U.S. law enforcement.