THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Free software movement leader Richard Stallman has said that the street cameras installed in the name of security is an encroachment on the privacy of the public. In a democracy, the people should be able to move around and meet each other without being tracked or put under surveillance, said Mr.

Stallman in his keynote address at the opening session of the fifth edition of the international free and open source software conference, Swatantra 2014, here on Thursday.

Flaying the tendency among hardware manufactures to keep the technical specification of devices secret, Mr. Stallman said selling productswith such restrictions should be made illegal.

He also stressed the need for reverse engineering to deal with such devices. “Even universities should teach lessons on reverse engineering as it would begood for the students' profession, besides contributing to free software movement,” Mr. Stallman said.

Mr. Stallman, who is the Free Software Foundation director, said that the propriety applications like Windows and Apple were malwares with ‘digital handcuffs.’

The personal information of users was being stolen even from remote locations. Even Android restricts the freedom of users.

“A programmer who develops a not-free software is, in fact, indulging in corruption, while one developing a free software is contributing to society," he said.

The conference with the theme ‘Free Software for a Free World’ will end on Saturday.