The age of mass electronic surveillance

Abstract

 Edward Snowden’s leaks published by many different media vehicles around the world have demonstrated that individuals’ most basic rights might have been continuously violated, mainly their right to privacy and freedom of speech, and therefore reforms would be in need. If this presumption turns out to be true, governments and industry shall foresee citizen’s requests and should protect them by establishing limitations, safeguards, oversight and accountability. Nevertheless, some of the proposed solutions up to this date might have an undesirable opposite effect, and instead of guaranteeing privacy and freedom of speech and other basic rights, they might provide tools to further violations. It is necessary to come up with internationally agreed solutions that will take into consideration not only current intrusions and damages, but also future human rights violations scenarios. These solutions must be enforced not only to governments’ activities, but also to the private sector, which might perform similar violations while providing their services and the private sector. This article will advocate that despite the differences between cultures, and the distinctive approaches given to, e.g., privacy and freedom of speech, a basal framework must be in place and it must be enforced in every jurisdiction. It will advocate that most effective solution to effectively enforce these rights might be to embed by design in devices and services technologies that follow internationally agreed safeguards, limitations and protections. This might overcome ineffective oversight and lack of political will, providing a foundation to more protected environments, even when national security is at stake. Therefore, it will be argued that technology might be the best answer to assure citizens’ fundamental freedoms in the digital era. It will underline that a similar methodology is currently in use by the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) in matters related to food and health security, and agreements on basic privacy and data protection privacy by design standards might employ a similar system.