Caspar Bowden

Bowden died of melanoma in Southern France on 9 July 2015 at the age of 53. He was survived by his wife Sandi. Jacob Appelbaum reported that on his deathbed, Bowden asked "that we work to ensure equal protection regardless of nationality". He was posthumously awarded the Liberty Lifetime Achievement Award (2015) and EFF Pioneer Award (2015).

In 2013, Bowden briefed the European Parliament on the FISA law. In an interview to The Guardian, he stated that he did not trust Microsoft. Instead, he advocated the use of Tor and Qubes OS. In October, he joined the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group.

In 2012, prior to the Snowden leaks, he authored the Note on privacy and Cloud computing, forewarning that the USA used European reliance on cloud computing services to monitor its data. After Snowden's disclosures vindicated him, he criticised PRISM, stating he had suspected the existence of the project during his time at Microsoft, although he had not known it by name. In winter 2014, he gave a talk on the subject at the 31st Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, The Cloud Conspiracy, detailing how he had worked out the shape of PRISM from open sources, and the lack of reaction to his warnings to European Union institutions.

In 2002, Bowden joined Microsoft; he served as Senior Privacy Strategist for Europe, the Middle East and Africa until 2004, and became Chief Privacy Adviser for 40 countries in 2005. During his tenure, he expressed vocal opposition against the Human Rights discrimination between US citizens and foreigners enforced by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which he dubbed being "guilty of being a foreigner". His public advocacy led to his dismissal from Microsoft in 2011, after he stated that "If you sell Microsoft cloud computing to your own governments then this law (FISA) means that NSA can conduct unlimited mass surveillance on that data."

Bowden served on the Executive Committee of Scientists for Labour and helped shape the stance of the Labour Party on the matter. In 1997, he entered the world of privacy advocacy when he attended the Scrambling for Safety event organised by Simon Davies at the London School of Economics. After the Labour won power in 1997 and reneged on its promises, considering instead to enforce mandatory cryptographic backdoors, Bowden co-founded the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) in May 1998. He became its first director, earning the Winston award in 2000 for his work against the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

Caspar Pemberton Scott Bowden (19 August 1961 – 9 July 2015) was a British privacy advocate, formerly chief privacy adviser at Microsoft. Styled as "an independent advocate for information privacy rights, and public understanding of privacy research in computer science", he was on the board of the Tor anonymity service. Having predicted US mass surveillance programmes such as PRISM from open sources, he gathered renewed attention after the Snowden leaks vindicated his warnings.