The economic imperatives of surveillance capitalism arguably translate into new legal challenges to which the current laws and regulations on informational privacy rights fail to respond. In response, scholars often propose solutions rooted in techno-exceptionalism, focusing primarily on the design of new laws and rights. Few studies critically examine whether the existing legal frameworks are truly inadequate for safeguarding informational privacy rights.
This work seeks to address this gap by examining how the CJEU and the ECtHR engage with and enforce informational privacy rights in Europe. Using legal realism and systematic content analysis, I examine how the Courts respond to the threats posed by surveillance capitalism and how their working practices influence their adjudication processes.