Edward Snowden surveillance powers ruled unlawful

[Nergal]

 

The UK's bulk interception powers, exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, have been found to be illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.

In a landmark judgement, the court ruled agencies had violated rights as there were no proper safeguards.

The court crucially said bulk interception was legitimate and it had seen no evidence it had been abused.

Parliament reformed surveillance powers in 2016 and introduced a new watchdog. Critics say the system is still flawed.

What were the powers being challenged in court?
In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ - the UK's eavesdropping agency - had been secretly collecting communications sent over the internet on an industrial scale.

It could reassemble the communications, filter them and then analyse the remainder for anything useful to protecting national security.

Bulk surveillance programmes revealed:

"Tempora" - the bulk storage of all internet traffic GCHQ could harvest
"Karma Police" - an attempt to catalogue the web habits of any user who could be found
"Black Hole" - a digital library of more than one trillion internet "events"

The agency could also obtain data and content from its US partners and companies including Apple, Google and Facebook.

Campaigners argued that these collection systems violated the right to privacy - and on Thursday the European Court of Human Rights agreed.

What did the court say?
The judgement said the system revealed by Mr Snowden simply did not have any proper safeguards because it led to completely "untargeted" collection of information.