Ana’s PhD seeks to understand why surveillance carried out by private actors such as big tech platforms, and the business model it fuels, have remained largely unshaken, despite the existence of the ECHR and EU rights to privacy and data protection. To do that, it compares how the ECtHR and CJEU have dealt with surveillance carried out by both state and private actors to understand what role the rights may play in facilitating rather than constraining surveillance. Ultimately, it argues that the ECtHR and CJEU’s conceptualisations of the individual and freedom, the effects of the rights (vertical vs. horizontal), and how the rights’ scopes of protection are construed, all play a role in facilitating surveillance and enabling domination by default.