One reason to have an ethics code is that the law can’t possibly cover everything. Law is read in a fairly hostile manner (in the sense that people are looking for technicalities and loopholes), and also has to concern itself with enforceability, jurisdictions, etc.
Ethics are self-enforced mostly, and they are to be followed in good faith. An ethical engineer should not break the law, but nobody should break the law, that’s the bare minimum for existing in society.
If you thought the internet was overwhelmingly harmful and had little-to-no redeeming value, yes, working on network switches would be unethical.
> I would interpret IEEE's statement as it affects a single engineer to e.g. ensure that they are following best practices in protecting user information, e.g. if an engineer is asked by Meta to take some shortcut that exposes people's information publicly that would grounds for refusing to do that on an ethical basis.
I don’t see any particular reason to think they just mean exposing personal information to the public, when they talk about protecting privacy. I’d tend to assume Meta, like every other entity, is something we ought to protect people’s privacy from.
It is up to you to interpret the meaning personally. But nobody is going to punish you if you don’t obey the code, so why look for an out? Just don’t follow it.