Episode 7: Can Human Rights Law check Mass Surveillance?

In Flux

On May 19th, a few weeks after we recorded this episode, the German supreme court held that extra-territorial mass surveillance on foreigners is unconstitutional. This was a massive victory, particularly for global south citizens who have unwittingly been the target of illegal western mass surveillance for years. Human rights law has glaringly been unable to prevent this abuse of global power, particularly by the US. In this episode, Torsha Sarkar speaks to Arindrajit Basu about the reasons behind this incapacitation of international human rights law, and what we can do to fix it. Reading list: (1) https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2020/bvg20-037.html (2) http://nujslawreview.org/2019/12/27/extraterritorial-algorithmic-surveillance-and-the-incapacitation-of-international-human-rights-law/