Re-thinking international human rights law’s approach to identity in light of surveillance and AI

ABSTRACT As AI adoption increases, surveillance-related chilling effects are likely to impair individuals’ ability to freely develop their identities. This article examines International Human Rights Law’s (IHRL) approach to the protection of identity to assess its preparedness against this challenge. It determines that while identity is a central concept in IHRL, no clear and unified approach to the protection of what we term ‘identity as a whole’ exists. In response, this article argues that IHRL must evolve to protect the overall ecosystem of events, interactions, and chance that are central to identity formation. This re-conceptualisation of identity poses two challenges to IHRL. First, as protection of ‘identity as a whole’ requires simultaneous protection of all its features, analysis of harm cannot be adequately conducted using the traditional right-by-right approach. Second, protecting the social processes that identity formation depends upon requires IHRL to expand its scope beyond the individual and individual rights.