Comparing Digital Privacy Rights in Democracies and Authoritarian States: A Public Law Analysis of Data Protection and Surveillance Laws

The huge growth of data usage, projected at over 181 zettabytes by 2025, has become an issue of worrisome in individuals as safeguarding the individual privacy as well as enabling state surveillance has emerged as a pivotal public-law issue worldwide. This research paper fills up the gap with the help of comparative public-law scholarship; analysing digital privacy rights, data protection, and surveillance laws in two major democracies (E.U. & U.S.) and two authoritarian countries (China & Russia). These have been chosen based on their influence globally having different legal traditions, and having different approaches for balancing the state power with individual autonomy. We have talked about five major questions in this research such as on the matters of privacy guarantees, power of surveillance, oversight mechanisms, fallback mechanism, impact on human rights, and the privacy-security balance. This study uses doctrinal analysis of primary sources (e.g. GDPR, Fourth Amendment, PIPL, Yarovaya Law), precedents (e.g., Schrems II, Carpenter), and recent AI-integration measures (EU AI Act; China’s AI reporting rules) etc. The methodology used here combines the constitution of respective countries with the available data of enforcement and practices done by institutions in their respective jurisdictions. The primary lessons we will learn from this research is that we need an independent oversight institution as well as proportionality to have a strong privacy protection but it will be of no value if it is not enforced effectively. The above-mentioned democratic countries use the surveillance techniques via necessity and proportionality test to keep it effective. In contrast, the authoritarian government works for the interests of state authorities, often giving low priority to the rights of the persons. Such type of major differences is visible in judicial remedies, transparency requirements, and regulatory independence. If there is still unchecked surveillance then they might lead to loss of civil liberties and participation of people in governance. The paper also recommends key changes and developments required at various levels to reduce the above risks. It is via this only that theory has been related to the enforcement, here research plays a bigger part of discussions on how the rights can be preserved along with security requirements emerging due to changing times.