ABSTRACT

Policy makers in the European Union (EU) taking security-related decisions are obliged to ensure all adopted measures are compliant with fundamental rights requirements. This chapter investigates how legal compliance, as determined by judges and courts, proceeds to take into account individual choices referring to privacy and personal data protection in relation to security. It is concerned with how legal decisions are taken using or ignoring individual choices related to privacy and personal data protection. The chapter explores how positive law sometimes appears to integrate the consideration of individual choices. The principles guiding the relation between fundamental rights and individual choices are examined. This is followed by a study of the significance of individual choices for the adjudication of the right to respect for private life, and for the adjudication and regulation of the right to personal data protection. Finally, some of the key tensions of the integration of individual choices in EU personal data protection law are discussed.