Dr. Ann Cavoukian, the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner, recently spoke to the Computer Science Club at the University of Waterloo. (video available in several formats)
Dr. Cavoukian has argued that software developers need to build privacy concerns right into their work, and her speech is receiving favourable attention online:
“… There’s something incredibly refreshing about hearing a high-ranking government official say things like, “Privacy is integral to freedom. You cannot have a free and democratic society without privacy. When a state morphs from a democracy into a totalitarian regime, the first thread to unravel is privacy.”…” (BoingBoing)
“… Privacy is really important, and watching this talk makes me realize, I have not being doing my part as a software developer to respect users privacy. Hell I log way too much information, just to make debugging a little easier on the off chance I have to debug it in production. I’d encourage all software developers out there to watch this talk, and take its message to heart. …” (Slashdot comments)