The legal significance of individual choices about privacy and personal data protection

This chapter looks into the security/privacy relationship through a legal prism. It is not about the legal acceptability of security measures, but rather about their legal- ity. Policy makers in the European Union (EU) taking security-related decisions are obliged to ensure all adopted measures are compliant with fundamental rights requirements. It is true that they might also, additionally, be interested in question- ing whether (some) individuals might perceive such decisions as impacting fundamentalrightsnegativelyornot.2 Thesearehowevertwodifferentissues,and should not be conflated: one regards compliance with fundamental rights, while the other is about perceptions of compliance. Whereas respect for fundamental rights is unquestionably a legal issue, perceptions of compliance might be described as a societal consideration, potentially addressed from an economic perspective in terms of a possible negative impact on the commercialisation of technological products.