> We put thieves in prison...In the same way society has a reason to put strict limits on surveillance
On one hand, we have a stylised burglar. On the other, a stylised lockpicking tool maker. The former is illegal; the latter is more complicated.
I am conservative about expanding the scope of the law. You criminalise surveillance apps in one decade and in the next, a security researcher disclosing a bug gets bitten.
> what damages can someone with a spy app on their phone ask for?
If someone snooped on my phone without my permission, they would see a lot of confidential client information. They may also see my and my loved ones’ protected health information. Finally, they will have sought and procured illicit access to my device, which is itself illegal. Lots of potential monetary damage in there, if only in legal time to ensure everyone who needs to be notified gets notified.
We've decided that privacy and freedom from surveillance is highly valued and deserving protection.
The target audience of that company is teenagers of helicopter parents. Whatever they have on their phones isn't privileged or valuable information, so the civil damages approach doesn't work too well. Some may have (against all advice) nudes on them, but I'd rather not wait until those are available to the public, and even then only those whose nudies escaped can sue.
The law needs to project the notion that privacy is valued, because it is highly valued. The only idea that I can come up with is to restrict availability of spyware. Others may have better suggestions.
My suggestion is to require spyware like this to put up an obvious indication on the screen of the device that spyware is active on it.
That still allows parents and employees, the supposed target audience, to use the software for its alleged intended purpose, but renders it useless for the illegal use cases.
On one hand, we have a stylised burglar. On the other, a stylised lockpicking tool maker. The former is illegal; the latter is more complicated.
I am conservative about expanding the scope of the law. You criminalise surveillance apps in one decade and in the next, a security researcher disclosing a bug gets bitten.
> what damages can someone with a spy app on their phone ask for?
If someone snooped on my phone without my permission, they would see a lot of confidential client information. They may also see my and my loved ones’ protected health information. Finally, they will have sought and procured illicit access to my device, which is itself illegal. Lots of potential monetary damage in there, if only in legal time to ensure everyone who needs to be notified gets notified.