Technology vs Policy for privacy

Fred Trotter writes:

I have long been an advocate of reasonable and measured reaction to “privacy scare tactics”. I have argued, for instance, that it was a good thing that HIPAA does not cover PHR systems. But that does not mean that I do not think privacy is important. In fact there has been something nagging at the back of my brain for several years now:

We typically use technology to provide security, but we use typically use policy to protect privacy.

That is deeply problematic. To see why we should carefully consider privacy and security in a simple context.