You don't usually find companies asking for regulation on the technology that they're developing, but Microsoft is doing just that. The company wants Congress to write laws for its facial recognition technology in 2019. Microsoft is positioning itself as an outspoken elder statesman while still trying to beat its competitors. ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: For Silicon Valley, this has been a troubled year. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Facebook just had what might be the biggest wipeout in stock market history.

Civil liberties and privacy advocates said they both welcomed and felt wary of Microsoft's push for government regulation, questioning how committed the company was to strong user privacy controls. In May, for instance, Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, said at a company developer conference that privacy was a "human right." Yet in June, Microsoft donated $195,000 to an effort to defeat a consumer privacy bill in California. "People have a right to go about their lives without having their faces scanned in secret -- by companies or the government," said Alvaro Bedoya, director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, who has studied facial recognition. "Will Microsoft agree that companies should never scan your face without your permission? Will it agree that government face scans should be tightly controlled and in some cases banned?"