REDMOND, Wash. - Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, was at the Berlin meeting with government officials in the spring, when the case was still appears unexpectedly.
How does the company respond, officials demanded to know, in the decision of a judge in New York that would give the U.S. government access to e-mail a client sitting in a center data in Ireland? The Germans were already angered by revelations that Americans spied countries Chancellor Angela Merkel. And unless the judgment was reversed, an official said Smith, the German government never trust an American company like Microsoft to store your data in the cloud.
After their talks on the case in Germany, Microsoft then challenged the decision of the judge in court, the first time an American company is believed to have fought against an internal order data abroad. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for July 31.
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These decisions are regularly confronted by Mr. Smith, 55, who became the veteran Microsoft and ambassador for the de facto technology industry in general. As chief representative of Microsoft in terms of public policy, including privacy - small review about worldwide - Mr. Smith has an important role in many of the most important decisions that affect the fate of the company .
Mr. Smith said he told the German officer on the case. "Have taken it in a total commitment to persevere and do everything possible to win properly"
The promise of German officials had. Mr. Smith is one of the most influential voices within Microsoft, partly because it has been in office since 2002, it the oldest member of the team's senior management is done.
Its influence has only grown in recent years, while Microsoft has taken senior and made other significant changes, all in an effort to keep pace with competitors in the market. Last week, in another major change, Microsoft said it plans to eliminate 18,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its total workforce, over the next 12 months in order to thin layers of bureaucracy in the business and go faster.
But the weight of Mr. Smith extends the technology industry in general, and partly because of their understanding of Washington. Mr. Smith has worked for years as a lawyer before moving it outside Seattle Microsoft headquarters here. While much of the technology industry is the government with a strong sense of skepticism, if not disdain, has cultivated relationships for years.
"He brings more sensitivity Washington west coast than many of their peers," Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former State Department official who now heads the New America Foundation and attended Princeton University, said Mr. Smith . "The need for government involvement is recognized. Government is not only favors institution. Must be part of the solution. "
Political skills of Mr. Smith led to speculation that he will pursue elected office. For now, however, he puts those skills to use for the technology industry and Microsoft, especially after the revelations of Edward J. Snowden government efforts to collect online service private data managed by Microsoft, Google and others without search warrants and subpoenas. Leaks narrowed executives in the industry, many worry about the damage to the appeal of their products.
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Last year, Smith equivalent government spying with other threats such as malware and cyber-attacks, and he also led a surge of industry changes in the way the government collects data .
"People will not use the technology they do not trust, and we must take the kind of action to maintain this confidence," he said in an interview last week.
First political problem Microsoft suggests how Mr. Smith likes to treat problems with pragmatism. When he interviewed for the attorney general post in 2001 with Bill Gates and other senior executives of the company, Microsoft is facing a long list of sanctions in its antitrust battle MJ, narrowly avoiding a disruption of the orderly society government.
But a new wave of antitrust battles in Europe and private companies arises. During his interview, Mr. Smith showed a single slide frames indicating that Microsoft needs to make peace with their enemies.
At that time, Microsoft was widely regarded as a tyrant. People who know Mr. Smith stated that the change in the legal position of the company in the antitrust case and subsequent legal positions that the company has taken, has helped mitigate the public image of the company. Repeated stumbles important Microsoft products also makes the company seem less frightening.
After revelations Snowden, Mr. Smith followed an effort across the industry to limit the damage. In July last year, Mr. Smith took the phone and called his counterpart at Google, Kent Walker, to examine whether companies could gain strength to work together on an agreement with the government on collection data.
The opening was remarkable considering Microsoft and Google are fierce competitors, and Microsoft criticized Google's practices on privacy through its advertising campaign "Scroogled".
But the two companies have put aside their hostilities in January, they and other technology companies have reached an agreement with the Obama administration. Leslie Miller, a spokesman for Google, declined to comment.
"Kent and I talked often," Smith said. "Sometimes we're on the same side, sometimes we are on opposite sides."
And fall of 2013, Mr. Smith and Erika Rottenberg, general counsel LinkedIn, social media company, organized a meeting of the General Council from a half-dozen major technology companies talk further unify their efforts to pressure the change of government. The meeting in a private room of a restaurant in Palo Alto, California, eventually led to the formation of the coalition government oversight reform, with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft and LinkedIn as members.
"It is a good glue for these groups because of their policies and general intelligence skills," Bruce Sewell, general counsel of Apple, said Mr. Smith.
Some of these positions have continued to modify Microsoft Privacy advocates putting Smith in the crosshairs of his objections. In March, a legal filing a criminal case against a former Microsoft employee revealed that Microsoft can intercept e-mail and instant messaging accounts of a French blogger. Spying on services running Microsoft implementation was part of an internal investigation into the leak of a former employee, who received a prison sentence of three months.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy nonprofit, said that his view of Microsoft shares on privacy was "somewhat favorable." While he criticized Microsoft espionage, congratulated Mr. Smith has promised to hand out quickly similar to law enforcement agents in future cases.
Mr. Smith has had disappointments in your work. After a two-year investigation on Google, the Federal Trade Commission last year revealed that the company did not violate the antitrust laws in the way you manage search results on the web, as Microsoft had argued .
Ed Lazowska, a computer science professor at the University of Washington, said Mr. Smith also used his pulpit to defend Microsoft investments in education and changes in immigration policy, two important issues industry and Microsoft.
"There are very few people for whom I feel such admiration," wrote Mr. Lazowska in an e-mail. "Imagine saying that a lawyer!"
