Themes
These 17 themes reflect the most pressing and recurring areas where digital rights intersect with legal challenges in the cases we’ve gathered. Streamlining to these categories enables clearer, more intuitive navigation and supports meaningful comparisons across jurisdictions. Each theme captures a distinct but often overlapping dimension of how digital technologies impact rights, ensuring the digital rights litigation tracker remains comprehensive and accessible. The descriptions are non-exhaustive and can be adapted further.
Surveillance
Monitoring and tracking by state or corporate actors, often without consent or transparency.
Examples: biometric surveillance, facial recognition in public spaces, spyware on activists’ phones.
Data Collection & Retention
Practices around how data is gathered, stored, and retained, especially without informed consent.
Examples: SIM card registration policies, mandatory retention of call records, surveillance infrastructure on telecom networks, indefinite storage of migrant data.
Data Protection
Personal, biometric, or sensitive data, and how it’s handled.
Examples: lack of clear data protection laws, misuse of data, unauthorized transfer of data.
National Security
Digital rights infringed in the name of public order, defence, or counterterrorism. Often used to justify surveillance and censorship.
Examples: protest-related internet blackouts, surveillance under anti-terror laws, encrypted app bans.
Privacy
The right to keep communications, identity, and activity private and secure from intrusion or misuse from public and private organisations.
Examples: digital privacy breaches, unlawful searches of devices, failure to secure user data.
Platform/Algorithmic Accountability
Holding digital platforms accountable for their algorithmic decisions and content governance practices. Often intersects with labour rights, content moderation/regulation.
Examples: biased content recommendation systems, opaque moderation policies, third-party contractor hiring policies.
AI Harms
Risks and rights violations stemming from artificial intelligence use in both public and private sectors.
Examples: facial recognition, automated decision-making, deepfakes, AI-generated misinformation, AI decision-making.
Content Moderation/Regulation & Mis/disinformation (Information Integrity)
How content is regulated online, including moderation policies, failures and the spread of mis/disinformation.
Examples: online hate speech/violence, censorship, state-sponsored disinformation, arbitrary takedowns.
Freedom of Expression
The right to express opinions and access diverse voices online without undue censorship.
Examples: blocked news websites, criminalization of digital activism, right to protest online/bans on protest-related speech, freedom of speech online, freedom of press (online), artistic freedom.
Right to Access
Access to the internet, digital tools, and information as a fundamental right.
Examples: internet shutdowns, language/infrastructure barriers, exclusion of persons with disabilities, accessibility.
Labour Rights
Rights of workers in the digital space, including those working in precarious tech or platform-mediated jobs.
Examples: unfair treatment of content moderators, lack of protection for gig workers, AI-managed work conditions.
Gender
Gendered experiences of online spaces, platforms, and technologies.
Examples: online gender-based violence, lack of representation in tech, gender bias in AI systems.
Intellectual Property Rights
Ownership, authorship, and creative rights in the digital spaces.
Examples: copyright infringement, exploitation of local content, AI-generated works, authorship/ownership, creativity
Health
Intersection of technology and healthcare, including data, access, and health-related surveillance.
Examples: misuse of health data, digital vaccine passports, AI in medical decision-making.
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction
When regulation in one country, imposes compliance in other countries.
Examples: foreign lawsuits against Big Tech, jurisdictional challenges in transnational data cases.
Competition & Anti-trust
Power imbalances in the digital economy, particularly platform monopolies and market exclusion.
Examples: abuse of market dominance by Big Tech, exclusion of local platforms, anti-competitive app store rules.
Environmental Justice & Sustainability
How digital infrastructures and technologies intersect with environmental harm, land use, and ecological rights. Land rights and ecological justice are often intertwined with sustainability concerns.
Examples: energy extraction, water use, emissions, land grabbing, displacement of indigenous communities, and digital infrastructure projects affecting vulnerable ecosystems.