Former National Security Agency general counsel Stewart Baker said that Blackberry’s innovative encryption efforts, which Google and Apple are planning to emulate, partially led to the company’s downfall.

He spoke at the Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland.

Reporting on Baker’s address, ZDNet said Baker told the summit that some countries restricted Blackberry’s efforts to market their products because the company wouldn’t fully cooperate with requests to hand over stored data. Those countries included Russia, China, and the United Arab Emirates.

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Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith spoke at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society Nov 4, discussing government information requests, ensuring the privacy of consumers and trust in U.S. technology companies.

When governments ask Microsoft for data on the company’s enterprise customers, the company passes the request on to their client. If that action doesn’t resolve the issue, then Microsoft will challenge the request in court. Individual customers don’t get the same treatment, he said.

As reported in BetaBoston, Smith said, “The legal right that governments have to ask for and acquire data about a consumer depends on what the person’s nationality is, and where the data is stored, and where the parent company is headquartered, among other things.”

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Fannie Mae has appointed Brian P. Brooks, 45, as executive vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary effective Nov. 10.

Brooks was vice chairman and chief legal officer at OneWest Bank before his Fannie Mae appointment.

Prior to OneWest Bank, Brooks was a managing partner at the global law firm O’Melveny & Myers where he led an office of more than 150 attorneys and played a lead role in crafting the banking industry’s response to the 2010-2011 foreclosure crisis, Fannie Mae reports in a release.

Brooks received his law degree with honors from the University of Chicago, and holds a BA in Government from Harvard University from which he graduated cum laude.

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