{"id":1159,"date":"2010-10-06T01:01:32","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T09:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1159"},"modified":"2010-10-06T01:15:40","modified_gmt":"2010-10-06T09:15:40","slug":"remembering-andreas-pfitzmann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=1159","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Andreas Pfitzmann"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andreas Pfitzmann, head of the Privacy and Data Security Research group at Technische Universit\u00e4t Dresden, has died.\u00a0\u00a0For more than 25 years he worked on\u00a0privacy and multilateral security issues.\u00a0 As Caspar Bowden puts it, “Andreas was the eminence grise of serious PET research in Europe, an extraordinarily decent person, and massively influential in the public policy of privacy technology in Germany and Europe.”<\/p>\n

Those not familiar with his work should definitely read and use\u00a0A terminology for talking about privacy by data minimization<\/a> – a great\u00a0contribution\u00a0that gives us\u00a0clearly defined concepts\u00a0through which scientific understanding of privacy and multilateral security can move forward.<\/p>\n

The obituary posted by Germany's Chaos Computer Club\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0reveals his impact on a\u00a0community that extended far beyond the walls of the university:<\/p>\n

The\u00a0sudden and unexpected\u00a0death of Professor\u00a0Andreas Pfitzmann on 23rd September 2010\u00a0leaves a huge gap in the lives of all who knew him. Through both his work and approach, Prof. Pfitzmann set measurably high standards. He was one of a small group of computer scientists\u00a0who always clearly put forward his soundly based and independent opinion.\u00a0In his endeavours to foster cross-discipline interaction, he proved instrumental in shaping both technical and political discourses on anonymity and privacy issues in Germany \u2013 thus ensuring him a well-deserved international reputation.\u00a0He always managed to cross the boundaries of his discipline and make the impact of technology comprehensible.\u00a0His contributions to research in this regard remain eloquent and courageous, and his insistence on even voicing inconvenient truths means he will remain a role model for us all.<\/p>\n

In his passing we recognise and mourn the loss of an outstanding scientist, unique in his stance as a defender of people\u2019s basic rights of anonymity and the administration of information pertaining to themselves \u2013\u00a0both of which are basic prerequisites for a thriving democracy. None of us will ever forget his rousing lectures and speeches, or the ways he found to nurture experimental, enquiring thought amongst an audience.<\/p>\n

In Andreas Pfitzmann, too many of our members have lost a dear friend and long-term\u00a0inspirer. Our thoughts are firmly with his family, to whom we extend our deepest and most profound condolences.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I too will miss both Andreas Pfitzmann and the great clarity he brought to any conversation he participated in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have lost a pioneer who led the way in showing that privacy research is a key to computer science <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40,11,64],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}