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David Flaherty is a specialist in the management of privacy and information policy issues. He served a six-year, non-renewable term as the first Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Province of British Columbia (1993-99). He built an office of 25 staff with an enviable record for successful mediation of access to information disputes. Flaherty wrote 320 Orders under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. He also pioneered the development of site visits to public bodies (hospitals in particular) as a form of privacy auditing.

In the fall of 1999 Flaherty served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Minister of Industry Canada in support of Bill C-6, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Flaherty’s first book was Privacy in Colonial New England (1972). In 1974 he started comparative public policy work in Europe and North America that led to a series of books, including Protecting Privacy in Surveillance Societies: The Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, France, Canada, and the United States (1989). Flaherty has written or edited fourteen books.