No, you could also not give the employer such a destructive power in the first place. Moreover, if you must give them that power, you could ensure that it cannot be invoked accidentally by a single person missing a single mouse click. You don't seem able to understand that not allowing the problem to arise in the first place would automatically avoid the negative consequences for all concerned.
You also seem to be latching onto something about government prohibiting actions, as if I'm advocating some sort of specific statute law to prevent this behaviour. The only thing I'm saying is that everyone should be responsible for their own actions and the consequences thereof, and that if someone through their carelessness harms another then the law should deal with the culprit accordingly. This is a basic principle of common law and common sense, I'm just applying it in context.
But I'm not. No matter what you do to the IT person, how much you sue him or her for, how hard you torture them, how much you hang draw and quarter them or put their head on a spike, or whatever, however much you take out your frustration on them you will not change the fact that your ultra important files are now gone.
The only way to change that is to take a backup.
I'm not interested in blaming the "victim" (accidents don't have victims, crimes have victims) and I'm not interested in punishing the person who made a mistake, assuming it was a genuine mistake.
I'm interested in making it not happen again, mitigating the consequences (for both parties), and doing so without ruining everyone elses life because one person was dumb and another careless.
If you don't understand the system, how are you supposed to know that one click can do this? It's clear from the article that the victim in this case didn't understand that it was possible at all.
If you hit your head hard enough, your frontal lobes can tear on the sharp bits inside your skull. If you don't understand this you can still drive a car. You can still make and sell cars. You can still walk over a cracked pavement or ride a bicycle.
Ignorance is only a defense in the sense that it gets people to feel sorry for you, ignorance does not make the universe undo the damage or help you compensate for the damage. Ignorance may be a defence, but it's still a stupid policy.
I don't understand what this change may do to my phone so I will take a backup -> good.
I don't understand what this change may do to my phone but I trust the government will have prohibited the employer from allowing it do anything I would consider bad -> bad.
Seriously? You think that an employee was told, clearly and unambiguously, that by connecting their phone up to work e-mail they ran the risk of having their entire phone wiped including all of their non-work-related stuff at any time just because someone missed a single mouse click over in IT, and they forgot this?
No more than they would be told that a single misclick of the accountant's mouse might lead to them not being paid that month, or that a single misclick of the HR's mouse might lead to them being marked deceased, or a single click of the HR's mouse might select the wrong file to upload and leak their SSN to the world.
It is not reasonable to inform everyone of everything which might go wrong. There is too much which might go wrong.