Satya Nadella Calls for Stronger Privacy Protections ⇥ wsj.com

Satya Nadella, in a video interview with Wall Street Journal editor in chief Matt Murray:

In fact, one striking thing is that digital companies now are not just tech companies. An agricultural business, to a retail business, to a health care business are all becoming first-right digital businesses. And that’s good news for our economy; it’s good news for the future.

The unintended consequences — let’s face it. There are three things that I feel we need to tackle. One is privacy. As the world becomes digitized — in particular, as the physical space itself is now embedded with computing — I think privacy is going to become a prime issue in our homes, in our work, in every place we go and visit.

And, so, we have to sort of deal with it as a human right. […] We in the tech industry; but, guess what? Every bank, every retailer, every health care company will also need to deal with privacy as a human right.

My focus here is on abuses of privacy primarily by “tech” companies like Google and Facebook, but strong and effective privacy legislation does not solely protect individuals from those companies. Ideal legislation would restrict how our data is used and shared by all kinds of businesses, and rein in some of the grossly-abusive marketplaces that sell data without our explicit permission.