Former Microsoft Privacy Director now trusts only open source software.

From 2002 to 2011, Caspar Bowden (Caspar Bowden) served as Chief Privacy Advisor at Microsoft and was responsible for this area in more than 40 countries. He probably had to work with the NSA and other government organizations, although Bowden says he never heard of the PRISM program.

Nevertheless, many years of work at Microsoft has led to the fact that now the former top manager of the corporation basically uses only open source software . He says that he cannot trust the program until he sees its source code. In addition, two years ago, Bowden refused to use a mobile phone.

A week ago, Caspar Bowden testified in the European Parliament about NSA surveillance of citizens. He also published a report (pdf) about the population surveillance programs (PRISM) and the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA) and their impact on the fundamental rights of EU citizens.


Protest action in Berlin
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Among other things, Bowden expressed this idea about the impact of the very fact of having total surveillance: “The society should think about this. Every public person, every influential person in the government, in business or the state — everyone now asks himself: what does the NSA know about him? And how can society trust the decisions of these people, their objectivity? How can we know for sure that they have not changed some of their decisions to protect their careers? This is a blow to each element of the representative control system. ”

Caspar Bowden is now working as an independent researcher, and in the report he collected all the information that was found on this issue, and also conducted a legal analysis of the actions of American intelligence. Video recording of his speech in the European Parliament with answers to parliamentarians' questions, see here (63 minutes).