Towards Robust Evaluation for Privacy QA Systems

Anna Leschanowsky, Zahra Kolagar, Erion Çano, Ivan Habernal, Dara Hallinan, Emanuël Habets, Birgit Popp


Abstract
The transparency principle of the General Data Protection Regulation requires data-processing information to be clear, precise, and accessible. While Large Language Models (LLMs) show promise in this context, their probabilistic nature raises challenges for ensuring truthfulness and comprehensibility. This paper presents an exploratory evaluation of eight Privacy Question Answering (QA) systems – including LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, and alignment-based approaches – on two datasets. We propose an evaluation framework that maps both traditional NLP and LLM-as-a-judge metrics to the legal requirements of comprehensibility and precision. Results show that no single system consistently excels across all metrics, and that system rankings can vary depending on the choice of metric and thresholding. We highlight open questions and emphasize the need to translate legal requirements into technical evaluation criteria. Our work provides a foundation for a more robust evaluation of Privacy QA systems.
Anthology ID:
2026.legal-1.2
Volume:
Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Legal and Ethical Issues in Human Language Technologies and Computational Approaches to Language Data Pseudonymization, Anonymization, De-identification, and Data Privacy (LEGAL2026 and CALD-pseudo 2026) @ LREC 2026
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma, Mallorca (Spain)
Editors:
Ingo Siegert, Maria Irena Szawerna, Khalid Choukri, Simon Dobnik, Paweł Kamocki, Therese Lindström Tiedemann, Pierre Lison, Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Ildikó Pilán, Lisa Södergård, Kossay Talmoudi, Elena Volodina, Xuan-Son Vu
Venues:
LEGAL | CALD-pseudo | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA
Note:
Pages:
12–25
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-ws-legal-02
DOI:
10.63317/4dr8vv9mj47r
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Anna Leschanowsky, Zahra Kolagar, Erion Çano, Ivan Habernal, Dara Hallinan, Emanuël Habets, and Birgit Popp. 2026. Towards Robust Evaluation for Privacy QA Systems. In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Legal and Ethical Issues in Human Language Technologies and Computational Approaches to Language Data Pseudonymization, Anonymization, De-identification, and Data Privacy (LEGAL2026 and CALD-pseudo 2026) @ LREC 2026, pages 12–25, Palma, Mallorca (Spain). ELRA.
Cite (Informal):
Towards Robust Evaluation for Privacy QA Systems (Leschanowsky et al., LEGAL-CALD-pseudo 2026)
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