"What we see is the company generally portrays itself as privacy-friendly, and yet we see that it is, in many cases, lobbying against those same principles," said Michael Connor, executive director of Open Mic, a nonprofit group that uses shareholder proposals to force corporate accountability.

Open Mic worked with shareholders on this and other proposals, one of which has already been successfully withdrawn by the filers. That proposal also called for Microsoft to conduct a human rights impact assessment related to its government contracts. Microsoft took shareholders up on that offer before the proposal even went to a vote.

Open Mic has coordinated a range of activist shareholder proposals at large tech companies that try to force the companies to address questions about the ethical use of technology and how workers are treated internally. The original Microsoft shareholder proposal from Open Mic aimed to force the company to hire an independent third-party to evaluate whether Microsoft's contracts with government agencies comply with the company's stated commitment to human rights principles.