ABSTRACT

How do data citizens come into existence and what are the sources of their rights? This chapter plots of the emergence of data citizens with rights founded in international law and their struggles to realise those rights in the face of state sovereign claims to the contrary. Citizenship is tied to the acquisition of bundles of rights. In the world of national monopolies over citizenship rights, the construction of supranational citizenship through the acquisition of supranational rights, which must be respected and enforced by state authorities is still under construction. This chapter maps the steps that have been taken, and where, in the construction of this new form of data citizenship, which is the result of people’s claims to privacy in the face of international incursions into their private lives.