The Surveillance Imposed on Us Today Far Exceeds That of the Soviet Union

In an article in the Guardian (April 3, 2018) Richard Stallman, the president of the Free Software Foundation, stated "The surveillance imposed on us today far exceeds that of the Soviet Union. For freedom and democracy’s sake, we need to eliminate most of it. There are so many ways to use data to hurt people that the only safe database is the one that was never collected."

The robust way to do that, the way that can’t be set aside at the whim of a government, is to require systems to be built so as not to collect data about a person. The basic principle is that a system must be designed not to collect certain data, if its basic function can be carried out without that data.

Mr. Stallman argues that systems should be designed not to collect personal data. If personal data is needed for a particular purpose, then that data must be deleted once the particular purpose is accomplished.

Data breaches would have little adverse affect on people if the data simply did not exist. Mr. Stallman titled his article "A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe", and perhaps it is... but I think it is something worth considering. Too often businesses and government agencies are asking for just a little information for their records, but is this information that they really need?