> The first is the lawyer drafting the release being overcautious. The second is a corporation being evil.
How was the hypothetical overcautious lawyer able to independently come up with such a specific scenario, which would require intimate technical knowledge?
I believe your are missing a third option, which is a synthesis of both. This is that the engineers reported that their sensor data could be used to collect sexual activity. However, in response to that, the corporation preferred to cover themselves legally rather than making any technical effort to address the risk on their customers' privacy.
The lawyer is not being overcautious, but simply displaying the corporation's priorities. The corporation is not being evil, it is just being psychopathic.
I’ve been in conversations many times where lawyers chose language about a product that the product couldn’t do and there would be no reasonable way to do it technically.
The language is usually in response to specific precedents or jurisdictions where surprises happened to someone else.
It’s not the job of the lawyer to trust what the technical people are saying, it’s to protect the company. The lawyer will want to protect/cover anything even remotely plausible and/or has been seen to be a problem in similar situations.
How was the hypothetical overcautious lawyer able to independently come up with such a specific scenario, which would require intimate technical knowledge?
I believe your are missing a third option, which is a synthesis of both. This is that the engineers reported that their sensor data could be used to collect sexual activity. However, in response to that, the corporation preferred to cover themselves legally rather than making any technical effort to address the risk on their customers' privacy.
The lawyer is not being overcautious, but simply displaying the corporation's priorities. The corporation is not being evil, it is just being psychopathic.