The Birth of Digital Human Rights: Digitized Data Governance as a Human Rights Issue in the EU (Information Technology and Global Governance)

This book considers contested responsibilities between the public and private sectors over the use of online data, detailing exactly how digital human rights evolved in specific European states and gradually became a part of the European Union framework of legal protections. The author uniquely examines why and how European lawmakers linked digital data protection to fundamental human rights, something heretofore not explained in other works on general data governance and data privacy. In particular, this work examines the utilization of national and European Union institutional arrangements as a location for activism by legal and academic consultants and by first-mover states who legislated digital human rights beginning in the 1970s. By tracing the way that EU Member States and non-state actors utilized the structure of EU bodies to create the new norm of digital human rights, readers will learn about the process of expanding the scope of human rights protections within multipledimensions of European political space. The project will be informative to scholar, student, and layperson, as it examines a new and evolving area of technology governance – the human rights of digital data use by the public and private sectors.

Rebekah Dowd is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Midwestern University in Texas. Rebekah’s research focuses on human rights within data policy, the online behavior of individuals and states, and policy decision-making by European politicians. Dr. Dowd teaches courses in global studies, international relations, comparative and foundational politics, European politics, and international political economy.