Privacy engineering and the techno-regulatory imaginary

Abstract

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in force since 2018, has introduced design-based approaches to data protection and the governance of privacy. In this article we describe the emergence of the professional field of privacy engineering to enact this shift in digital governance. We argue that privacy engineering forms part of a broader techno-regulatory imaginary through which (fundamental) rights protections become increasingly future-oriented and anticipatory. The techno-regulatory imaginary is described in terms of three distinct privacy articulations, implemented in technologies, organizations, and standardizations. We pose two interrelated questions: What happens to rights as they become implemented and enacted in new sites, through new instruments and professional practices? And, focusing on shifts to the nature of boundary work, we ask: What forms of legitimation can be discerned as privacy engineering is mobilized for the making of future digital markets and infrastructures?