Designing for privacy, are the Canadians on the right track

Dr. Ann Cavoukian is Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner. She recently gave a one hour lecture to Waterloo University’s Computer Science Club. The video of the lecture can be found here.

One of the most interesting ideas, she offered, was the thought that privacy should be designed into all ‘products’ – information services, business processes, etc. – from the beginning. In other words, the design of a product or service should embody the current legal level of disclosure, and no more.

In recent years, software designers have gradually started to think about building security into every aspect of their work, from the start, but doing the same thing with privacy doesn’t appear to have received the same attention. Perhaps this will change.