Why is it always about more data? The United Kingdom in the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice

For many years, the right to high standards of personal data protection was almost sacrosanct in the EU, as demonstrated by the creation of a Data Protection Directive (DPD) in 1995. However, this is no longer the case. Despite some resistance, the EU has consistently lowered its data protection standards in agreements with the US, such as the Passenger Name Records (PNR) (2004, 2006, 2007, and 2012) and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) (2010) agreements. Simultaneously, there has been an increasing use of personal data in the EU in the form of the Data Retention Directive (DRD) in 2006 and EU PNR, which is likely to be agreed in 2016. These measures are arguably disproportionate because the former (invalidated by the European Court of Justice in 2014) required the storage of all telecommunications data, while the latter will require the data of all airline passengers. The UK is well known for pushing for greater counter-terrorism co-operation at the EU level, and has been able to use windows of opportunity to push for both the DRD and EU PNR, underlying which are arguably illiberal norms. Therefore, I argue that the UK that has often been at the forefront, if not driving, illiberal norm diffusion in the EU.