While the collection, storage and analysis of our data becomes ever cheaper and easier, governments around the world are eager to make the surveillance of citizens the default setting. Therefore, it has never been more important to explore countermeasures that would protect our fundamental right to privacy. While the European Union continues to take positive steps to ensuring that public and private bodies protect the privacy of citizens (for example through the Data Protection Regulation), much work remains to be done in addressing issues of due process in how governments use, protect, and request user data. Specifically, government requests for so-called "lawful access" to user data are trending in both democratic and non-democratic nations, presenting one of the greatest challenges for the protection of fundamental rights. This talk will highlight this issue as well as provide a brief overview of the main challenges facing citizens in protecting their privacy, including some recent proposed laws in the EU and the US, that will show that bit by bit, our freedoms are being chipped away. The second half of the talk will focus on the need for domestic and international jurisprudence that protects our fundamental rights, and more broadly what can to be done to counter the surveillance state.