This article provides a two-layered framework to conceptualize privacy and data protection law. Drawing upon Kirsty Hughes’ behavioural understanding of privacy, this article argues that a common denominator in mainstream privacy theories can be identified by defining privacy as the guarantee of a free environment for social interaction. Data protection law serves as not only normative barriers to obtain and maintain privacy, but also crushers of unnecessary barriers created in the construction of the digital environment, which may insert existing social bias and create new forms of digital divide. This theoretical framework provides a better link to the ‘group privacy’ debate and challenges several orthodoxies in data protection law such as the centrality of the concept of ‘personal data’ and ‘individualistic control’ as the essence of the right to data protection. This article concludes that enhancing public participation and deliberation in digital environmental decision-making can be a promising direction forward to safeguard social freedom in a digital era.