A group of leading human rights NGOs in Britain are taking the UK government to the European Court of Human Rights over invasive mass surveillance practices they warn violate Britons\u2019 right to privacy and freedom of expression.<\/p>\n
The court appeal, filed by Privacy International, Bytes for All, Amnesty International, Liberty and other civil liberties groups, is a direct response to a ruling last December by Britain\u2019s surveillance court, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).<\/p>\n
The case, brought before the IPT, examined whether Britain and America\u2019s industrial surveillance programs uncovered by ex-NSA analyst Edward Snowden breach citizens\u2019 right to privacy.<\/p>\n
The IPT ruling found that Tempora, a program set up to monitor web traffic flowing in and out of Britain via fiber optic cables, is entirely lawful. It also said Britain and America\u2019s intelligence sharing system known as Prism is legal.<\/p>\n
During the court proceedings, fragments of previously clandestine government surveillance policies were made known to the public, which influenced the tribunal\u2019s final decision. Because these policies had been made transparent, the IPT resolved industrial spying was compliant with international human rights law.<\/p>\n
The appeal filed at the ECHR challenges the IPT\u2019s December ruling that industrial spying under Britain\u2019s controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) complies with the UK\u2019s duty to protect its citizens\u2019 human rights. RIPA regulates public bodies\u2019 deployment of and access to surveillance.<\/p>\n
The European Court of Human Rights will also consider whether certain provisions inherent to RIPA violate Article 14 of the Convention, which bans illegal discrimination.<\/p>\n
On shaky legal ground<\/em><\/p>\n The court appeal comes at a time when legal arguments justifying the government\u2019s surveillance policies are beginning to unravel. On February 6, Britain\u2019s surveillance court ruled that British intelligence services breached the law by accessing millions of individuals\u2019 personal data.<\/p>\n This landmark ruling signaled the first occasion that the IPT found UK security and intelligence services had acted unlawfully.<\/p>\n Several weeks later, during a separate IPT case involving Reprieve and Amnesty International, the UK government admitted that its program governing the interception, collection and use of material privileged under law breaches the Human Rights Act.<\/p>\n The most recent appeal filed at the ECHR follows 18 months of litigation between human rights NGOs and the British government. It uncovered multiple legal issues with the UK government\u2019s mass surveillance techniques.<\/p>\n Throughout the course of this legal wrangling, it emerged the UK government deems it justifiable to engage in mass surveillance of every Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google user in Britain, even if there is no suspicion that the user has broken the law.<\/p>\n In a bid to legitimize this, the government has secretly redefined Britons\u2019 use of these messaging platforms as \u201cexternal communications,\u201d according to Privacy International.<\/p>\n Carly Nyst, legal director of Privacy International, said mass surveillance tramples upon citizens\u2019 basic rights.<\/p>\n \u201cIntercepting millions of communications every day, and secretly receiving millions more from the NSA by the back door is neither necessary nor proportionate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Nyst argued that the IPT revealed a pro-government stance by siding with UK spy base GCHQ. However, she noted the ECHR has a \u201cstrong history of ensuring intelligence agencies are compliant with human rights law.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope that the court continues this tradition and GCHQ is finally held accountable for its unfettered spying on the world\u2019s communications,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n James Welch, Legal Director for Liberty, said the IPT maintains there are reasonable safeguards to protect Britons from industrial-scale privacy rights violations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe disagree, and hope the European Court will finally make clear to our security services that they cannot operate in near complete secrecy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is thanks only to Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations, and the scant disclosures we and the other claimants have been able to prise from the government, that we know anything whatsoever about what the intelligence services are up to.\u201d<\/p>\n Amnesty International lawyer Nick Williams said no individual is \u201cabove the law\u201d and the European Court of Human Rights now has an opportunity to \u201cmake this clear.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe UK government\u2019s surveillance practices have been allowed to continue unabated and on an unprecedented scale, with major consequences for people\u2019s privacy and freedom of expression,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is critical that we are able to seek and receive information of public interest from our confidential sources, free from government intrusion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A group of leading human rights NGOs in Britain are taking the UK government to the European Court of Human Rights over invasive mass surveillance practices they warn violate Britons\u2019 right to privacy and freedom of expression. The court appeal, filed by Privacy International, Bytes for All, Amnesty International, Liberty and other civil liberties groups, … Continue reading “Pressure builds on UK’s surveillance”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[2990,11433,3408,201,11431,11432,3030,2956,3355],"class_list":["post-18397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-edward-snowden","tag-european-court-of-human-rights","tag-gchq","tag-human-rights","tag-intrusion","tag-ipt","tag-nsa","tag-spying","tag-surveillance"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18398,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18397\/revisions\/18398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}