CHAPTER 13Privacy by Design Overview
Freedom and self-determination in the digital world are crucially dependent on keeping sovereignty over our personal information.
—Heiko Maas
German Minister for Foreign Affairs, 2015
The phrase privacy by design means different things to different people. It is essentially a framework to proactively (“by design”) integrate privacy principles into the design of software, hardware, networks, and business practices. Yet…questions abound! What does it really mean? Where do we apply it? How do we apply it? For some, privacy by design (PbD) is essentially a religion. For others, it's little more than a bunch of vague suggestions. Yet, all agree that we all need to implement some version of privacy by design everywhere we can, right here, right now.
If privacy by design is a “religion,” then it must have a God. By all accounts, that would be Dr. Ann Cavoukian, and her origin story is amazing.
Dr. Cavoukian, an Egyptian-born of Armenian descent, immigrated to Canada in 1958. There, she studied at York University and the University of Toronto, where she received her PhD in psychology. Her stellar career included heading the Research Services Branch for Ontario's Attorney General, serving as the first director of compliance at the Ontario Office of the Information Privacy Commissioner, and ultimately becoming the assistant commissioner in 1990. In 1997 she was appointed as the first woman to be privacy commissioner of Ontario, a position she was ...
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