Microsoft’s former head of privacy and respected independent privacy campaigner Caspar Bowden has died after a battle with cancer.
A popular and outspoken figure in privacy advocacy, Bowden was particularly active after the Snowden revelations of government surveillance, advising the European parliament among others.
He was a co-founder of the UK-based Foundation for Information Policy Research. He was also one of the primary dissenting voices warning of possible government surveillance via backdoors within cloud computing services prior to Snowden, which according to Bowden resulted in his dismissal from Microsoft in 2011.
“Combative and prickly, Caspar was also unfailingly kind and generous,” said Ray Corrigan, senior lecturer in technology at the Open University. “Caspar was a big believer in a Rawlsian model of justice, a stickler when it came to the universality of human rights and was unstinting in his criticism of corporate or government entities or agents who sought to undermine those rights and principles.”
Bowden was an advocate for the establishment of a pan-European privacy rights organisation and practiced what he preached. Disillusioned by what he saw as an inability of European law to protect personal privacy he turned to technology, sitting on the board of directors for the Tor anonymising service and advocating the use of the Qubes OS secure operating system.
Corrigan: “He was prepared to wrestle with the user unfriendly inconveniences of privacy enhancing technologies, as the almost meltdown of his laptop, four minutes into his ‘Reflections on Mistrusting Trust’ talk at QCon last summer, demonstrated.”
Journalists and privacy campaigners from around the world took to Twitter to voice their sadness with his passing on Thursday and share their tributes.
Deeply saddened by the loss of @CasparBowden, a rare combination of intellectual rigor and the passion of a human rights activist. #Privacy
— Garrett Cobarr (@GarrettCobarr) July 9, 2015
RIP @CasparBowden, a great privacy advocate: terrible loss
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 9, 2015
RIP Caspar Bowden :/ A man of great value, who understood the techno-political architrcture of surveillance before most of everyone else. <3
— Jérémie Zimmermann (@jerezim) July 9, 2015
Dark day for #privacy. Folks who knew @CasparBowden: we've just lost one of the most committed, single-minded activists our cause has known.
— Malavika Jayaram (@MalJayaram) July 9, 2015
.@CasparBowden thank you for fighting for our right to privacy, for our right to be free from control. You will be missed.
— Maria Xynou (@maria_xyn) July 9, 2015
“There were few, if any, more deeply informed, active, passionate and energetic advocates for the privacy cause. Caspar you will be sadly missed,” said Corrigan.
• EU states agree framework for pan-European data privacy rules
