Online Security and the Protection of Civil Rights: A Legal Overview

The paper examines the connection between online security and the protection of civil rights from a legal viewpoint, that is, considering the different types of rights and interests that are at stake in national and international law and whether, and to what extent, they concern matters of balancing. Over the past years, the purpose of several laws, and legislative drafts such as ACTA, has been to impose “zero-sum games”. In light of current statutes, such as HADOPI in France, or Digital Economy Act in UK, the paper intends to illustrate how more satisfactory solutions are feasible in the field of online security, such as the new “Police and Criminal Justice Data Protection Directive” that the European Commission presented in January 2012. At least in Western legal systems, it should be clear that either civil rights prevail over security (no balancing), or such balance has to satisfactorily protect individual rights (proportionality).