Ushahidi Mailing Lists

On 13-06-13 02:21 PM, Heather Leson wrote:
> I've been reading up on Privacy by Design. As we build 3.0, thinking
> about how to make our software more secure and protect the amazing
> people who use it. 

I'm new to Ushahidi but I've been working on privacy protection for a
long time. I hope I'm not out of line offering a suggestion here. I was
the VP of privacy rights association here in Canada for several years.

Privacy by Design is more gimmick than substance. It seems to be most
useful as a PR tool for organizations looking to convince their
customers that they care about privacy, when they actually don't. I've
had more than one argument with the Ontario Privacy Commissioner about
this, to no avail.

I wouldn't spend too much time on Privacy by Design as such. The one
solid idea in the mix is that privacy should be a design consideration
of the system from the start. Much like software security should be a
design consideration from the start as well. I think that's worth
focusing on and the rest of it is, unfortunately, fluff.

Regards,
Paul