It never ceases to amaze me the amount of leverage software engineers already have, as evidenced by the wages and benefits that are standard in this industry, that we nevertheless refuse to use to try to exert some control over what we are building.
And are unions good at this stuff? Here in Sweden, they seem to be mostly aligned with the industrial profit motive. For example, the big metal workers' union supported extending our large arms export deal with Saudi Arabia, since it employs thousands of people.
But look, what if we just didn't use the word "union"? What if we were talking about a professional organization like the bar association that set standards of what its members can and can't do, what is and is not ethical work? That set certain expectations of providing your otherwise very expensive services for free to people who need it but can't pay?
Without knowing too much about bar associations I feel like a programmer association with a code of ethics similar to the ABA model rules (perhaps including the Six Fixes[0]) would be a great start to reining in privacy violations.
I immediately see that it would need to be government mandated for it to have any effect, and given that many governments routinely violate these terms I don't know how it could be enforced.