Can human rights law bend mass surveillance?

There is an increasing gap between the right to privacy and contemporary surveillance schemes. As a concrete example, the US surveillance operation PRISM and its impact on European citizens' right to privacy is discussed. This paper provides a brief introduction to PRISM, continues with an outline of the right to privacy as stipulated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Directive on Data Protection, and moves on to discuss whether international human rights law may be used to bend mass surveillance.