Edward Snowden’s disclosure of NSA documents to the Guardian and Washington Post produced sensational news coverage beginning in June 2013 about the National Security Agency’s PRISM program.  Reporters asserted US technology companies were members of PRISM, while the companies uniformly denied any knowledge of PRISM.  Revelations of secret orders for hundreds of millions of telephone records led to concerns that similar volumes of email account records had also been produced.  The FBI insisted that companies could not confirm that they had received any orders.  Microsoft and Google filed suits in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the right to disclose aggregate numbers of secret orders and impacted customer accounts.  In January 2014 the Department of Justice announced that it was confirming that companies have the right to publish aggregate information about FISA orders.  Mr. Frank will discuss Microsoft’s experiences responding to the controversy and its litigation.

Mr. Frank is Vice President, Deputy General Counsel and Chief of Staff, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington.  Mr. Frank manages the Office of Legal Compliance, the Industry Affairs group, the Law Enforcement and National Security group, and the department’s Business and Technology Solutions group, and devotes substantial time to international competition law and policy issues.

Mr. Frank joined Microsoft in Paris in August 1994.  His responsibilities focused on competition law matters with the European Commission and national governments, software licensing and copyright law and regulatory policy for the Internet. 

Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Frank practiced law in San Francisco with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.  Mr. Frank received his A.B. degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and his J.D. from Columbia Law School.