society it should be the government itself. we need clear laws. we need the kind of transparency so the public knows how these laws are being applied. we need to recognize that as important as public safety clearly is, we also have important constitutional freedoms, the right to speak, the right to be secure from unreasonable government searches. all of which are at stake. this is a matter for the public at large to decide through our elective processes. >> woodruff: brad smith with

it came in the form of an open letter to president obama. the call for curbs focused on people's personal information being collected from online traffic. eight major companies, including apple, facebook, google, microsoft and twitter, banded together to write an open letter to the president and congress. it appeared in full-page newspaper ads and online. the letter read in part:

the letter read in part: it's the tech giants' latest bid to salvage public trust, amid revelations that they've had to provide users' data to the government. the details come from edward snowden, who leaked a trove of material from the national security agency last summer. intelligence officials maintain

have been responding to subpoenas, to warrants, to court orders. we, of course, know what we have been doing. but frankly, what really surprised people across the tech sector was at the end of october, "the washington post" reported that beyond these legal processes, there were government evidents to infect collect data. in this instance it was data moving between the data centers within yahoo! and within google. and that wasn't within the confines of any legal process that anybody was aware of. and that shent a shockwave throughout the industry. >> i've been reading today what some of the privacy

that. >> certainly we realized as an industry that there are more governments. this is not confined to any single country, that are seeking to hack their way or tap into cables and collect data so here at microsoft but really across our industry, companies increasingly are taking steps. increasing encryption that puts everything in code when it's going across the cable, for example, so the government cannot read, necessarily what it might be getting. we're increasing the ability

other countries are as well. but it's an issue of broad importance importance to the public. everybody should be concerned about the balance being struck between protecting safety on the one hand which with is obviously important. and protecting our fundamental freedoms and rights to privacy as well. so as important as private discussions are, this is too important to leave to private discussion alone. >> and i also see that the companies are trying to expand your own encryption to make it harder for outsiders to come in and scoop up or take what you have. tell us a little bit about that. >> certainly we realized as an industry that there are