An experimental, all-day Workshop on Freedom and Privacy by Design took place
on April 4, 2000, as part of the 10th annual Conference on Computers, Freedom,
and Privacy. It invited over 30 well-known systems architects, implementors,
and experts in privacy and usability to investigate, in depth, three different
proposals for creating political artifacts: technology intended to bring about
particular types of political change -- in this case the reinforcement of
certain civil liberties. This article summarizes the rationale and structure
of the workshop, the three proposals investigated, and what the workshop and
audience members had to say about the issues. It concludes with some information
on the workshop's impact to date and what lessons were learned by running
such an experiment.