I mean, yes, they’re linked! Privacy is a form of protection from a certain category of concerns - it means different things to different people. Off the top of my head, but there are easily several times this number of common concerns:
No unintended human sees something you consider personal
You don’t have a feeling of corporations following you around, creepily
Things you might say in anger can’t be used against you years later
You don’t get reminded of parts of yourself you don’t like
Anyone who would be inclined to discriminate against you doesn’t get the information they’d use to do so
Specific people who you don’t want in your life, aren’t able to mine large amounts of data about you
Erotic photographs of you are not circulated by strangers to whom you never gave consent for that
So, I’m definitely not a lawyer. I focus on protecting things through technical and social measures. The following is opinion only. :)
IANAL, again, but: The law protects… of these particular things, only the last, in most cases. There ARE legal protections of privacy, but they generally operate at a lower level, such as limiting how personal data can be collected or resold - which is also a very important concern, but it doesn’t directly map to the above, though it helps. And sites under EU jurisdiction are required to notify users that they set cookies, which is a noble goal but doesn’t necessarily protect anyone very effectively, as currently implemented. Also, in some situations, violations of the above notions of privacy can constitute harm for legal purposes; it’s just not usually by itself enough to establish liability. There usually needs to have been wrongdoing in connection with the harm.
Now, it’s certainly the case that engineers need to adapt to concerns that become relevant as a result of changing law. Privacy work is inherently done with the involvement of lawyers. But they’re separate concerns, just as - to jump problem domains - a game designer has a different set of concerns than a gameplay programmer.
Is there a law tag? Speaking as a privacy engineer (uncertified atm), this is really a law issue and has very little to do with privacy.
Glad to see this story here, though. It’s certainly something that I hope people here will care about!
Added law tag.
(Googling what a privacy engineer is right now!)
I was under impression that privacy and law were inextricably linked. How do we separate the two domains?
I mean, yes, they’re linked! Privacy is a form of protection from a certain category of concerns - it means different things to different people. Off the top of my head, but there are easily several times this number of common concerns:
So, I’m definitely not a lawyer. I focus on protecting things through technical and social measures. The following is opinion only. :)
IANAL, again, but: The law protects… of these particular things, only the last, in most cases. There ARE legal protections of privacy, but they generally operate at a lower level, such as limiting how personal data can be collected or resold - which is also a very important concern, but it doesn’t directly map to the above, though it helps. And sites under EU jurisdiction are required to notify users that they set cookies, which is a noble goal but doesn’t necessarily protect anyone very effectively, as currently implemented. Also, in some situations, violations of the above notions of privacy can constitute harm for legal purposes; it’s just not usually by itself enough to establish liability. There usually needs to have been wrongdoing in connection with the harm.
Now, it’s certainly the case that engineers need to adapt to concerns that become relevant as a result of changing law. Privacy work is inherently done with the involvement of lawyers. But they’re separate concerns, just as - to jump problem domains - a game designer has a different set of concerns than a gameplay programmer.
I forgot to say thanks for your excellent response! Thank you!
How about break your window and pretend to be a window repair guy? The possibilities are endless.
“You can go to work, we’ll let ourselves out when we are finished. Don’t worry about the bill, this one’s on us.”