Privacy and the Role of International Law in the Digital Age

Driven mainly by the transnational nature of privacy threats involving private actors as well as States, calls are increasingly made for an ‘international’ privacy framework to meet these challenges. This book examines the role of international law in securing privacy and data protection in the digital age. Mapped against a flurry of global privacy initiatives, the book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the extent to which international law attends to the complexities of upholding digital privacy.

Firstly, it interrogates boundaries of international privacy law in upholding privacy and data protection in the digital ecosystem, where threats to privacy are increasingly transnational, sophisticated, and privatized. Secondly, the book explores the potential of global privacy initiatives, namely the Internet Bills of Rights, universalization of regional systems of data privacy protection, and the multi-level privacy discourse at the United Nations, in reimagining the normative contours of international privacy law. Thirdly, having shown the limitations of these international privacy initiatives in attending to the international law problem, the book proposes a pragmatic approach to the international law of privacy that is better suited to the challenges of the digital age. The book lays out a set of reform ideas that could help address the major normative and institutional blind spots in international privacy law.