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Article

24 Sep 2018

Author:
Amnesty International (UK)

UK: Judges find laws enabling mass surveillance violate rights to privacy & freedom of expression

"Campaigners win vital battle against UK mass surveillance", 13 Sep 2018

The European Court of Human Rights has today ruled that UK laws enabling mass surveillance violate the rights to privacy and freedom of expression...

Judges found that:

  • The UK’s historical bulk interception regime violated the right to privacy protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and to free expression, protected by Article 10.
  • The interception of communications data is as serious a breach of privacy as the interception of content, meaning the UK regime for bulk interception of communications data was unlawful.
  • The UK’s regime for authorising bulk interception was incapable of keeping the “interference” to what is “necessary in a democratic society”...

The ruling comes as part of a five-year challenge to the UK’s broad and intrusive spying powers, which were first revealed by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013... “Today’s judgment rightly criticises the UK’s bulk interception regime for giving far too much leeway to the intelligence agencies to choose who to spy on and when. It confirms that just because it is technically feasible to intercept all of our personal communications, it does not mean that it is lawful to do so. "The judgment also rightly recognises that collecting communications data - the who, what, and where of our communications - is as intrusive as collecting the content. This is a significant and important enhancement of our privacy protections.”