Surveillance and Digital Privacy in the Transatlantic ‘War on Terror’. The Case for a Global Privacy Regime

Abstract

By focusing on generalised, mass surveillance, the article examines the impact of the ‘war on terror’ on the right to privacy. The extent and limits of privacy protection in the United States and the European Union are analysed and compared, and it is argued that European Union law provides a higher level of constitutional protection of privacy than U.S. law. The article continues by providing a detailed analysis of the transformation of privacy in the evolution of transatlantic counter-terrorism cooperation, examines the challenges that such cooperation poses on the right to privacy in the European Union and provides a typology and evaluates critically the various transatlantic forms of governance which have been developed in order to address European privacy concerns. The final part of the article argues that in view of the increasingly globalised nature of mass surveillance and the human rights and rule of law challenges extraterritorial surveillance is posing, the way forward is for States to work towards the establishment of a global privacy regime. The article argues that European Union law can provide key benchmarks in this context and goes on to concretely identify four key principles which should underpin the evolution of a global privacy regime.

Keywords: privacy, data protection, human rights, security, terrorism, United States, European Union, transatlantic co-operation