Remarks by Brad Smith, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel
U.S. Attorney’s Office Press Conference on Blaster Virus Arrest
August 29, 2003
BRAD SMITH: Thank you John. On behalf of Microsoft, I would like to thank the FBI, the Secret Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office here and in Minneapolis. We were very pleased to have the opportunity to cooperate with these agencies at the earliest possible moment, and we remain committed to providing whatever technical support and cooperation is needed as this investigation moves forward.
Computer viruses today are a broad problem. The damage done to Microsoft in this instance is a small tip of the large iceberg of damage that was done to computer users around the world. If we are to be effective in solving this problem, law enforcement and our industry need to work together. And as we have seen when the private and public sectors do work together, people that commit crimes on the Internet can and will be caught.
We remain committed as a company to encouraging our industry more broadly to work cooperatively with law enforcement throughout the country, just as we also remain committed to continuing to move forward as an industry to strengthen our software against people who are trying to attack this infrastructure and to working with consumers to make it easier for them to address these issues.
In closing, I would like to express our gratitude for these individuals and the agents who worked on this case, both here, in Minnesota and around the country. It is because of there very fast efforts, their effective actions, that we were able to take this step forward today, and we look forward to continued progress in addressing the computer virus problem.
