Algorithmic power and human dignity: AI surveillance and the international human rights framework

AI-driven surveillance is testing the limits of international human rights law. Drawing on comparative case studies from India, Brazil, Kenya, and Palestine, this article asks a simple but pressing question: can mass algorithmic surveillance ever sit comfortably with the right to privacy under Article 17 of the ICCPR? The answer is that, at population scale, it should be presumed incompatible, though that presumption can be rebutted. The argument unfolds in three parts. First, by applying established Article 17 standards from ICCPR jurisprudence and treaty-body practice, it shows why indiscriminate surveillance warrants this presumption. It also shows how, depending on its design and effects, it can engage Articles 19, 25, and 26, with harms deepened by intersecting inequalities. Second, it places this legal finding within the political economy of AI surveillance as an industry, whose commercial logic and global supply chains echo the extraction and dependency that digital colonialism and TWAIL scholars have long described. Third, it assesses emerging governance regimes, including the EU AI Act, the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on AI, and the UN Global Digital Compact. Author finds that they leave structural accountability gaps unaddressed, and we propose a rights-by-design treaty framework as a stronger response.