It’s NO shock that the UK government has been unlawfully invading privacy…

Last Updated: October 17, 2016By
The judges said both the collection and holding of personal data breached people’s right to privacy [Image: Andrew Bret Wallis/Getty Images].

The judges said both the collection and holding of personal data breached people’s right to privacy [Image: Andrew Bret Wallis/Getty Images].

… It was mentioned in This Blog, two years ago, and appears to have been the justification for Theresa May’s snooper’s charter: She was legalising what she had already been doing.

The European Court of Justice had ruled that the then-current laws invaded individual privacy, and now the investigatory powers tribunal has ruled that the law does not comply with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Incidentally, Theresa May has been planning to quit the European Convention on Human Rights since before she became prime minister.

This information has been available for years.

If anybody missed it, they probably haven’t been reading Vox Political.

Maybe they need to start. Please feel free to encourage them – you’ll be doing us all a favour.

British security agencies have secretly and unlawfully collected massive volumes of confidential personal data, including financial information, on citizens for more than a decade, senior judges have ruled.

The investigatory powers tribunal, which is the only court that hears complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, said the security services operated an illegal regime to collect vast amounts of communications data, tracking individual phone and web use and other confidential personal information, without adequate safeguards or supervision for 17 years.

Privacy campaigners described the ruling as “one of the most significant indictments of the secret use of the government’s mass surveillance powers” since Edward Snowden first began exposing the extent of British and American state digital surveillance of citizens in 2013.

The tribunal said the regime governing the collection of bulk communications data (BCD) – the who, where, when and what of personal phone and web communications – failed to comply with article 8 protecting the right to privacy of the European convention of human rights (ECHR) between 1998, when it started, and 4 November 2015, when it was made public.

It added that the retention of of bulk personal datasets (BPD) – which might include medical and tax records, individual biographical details, commercial and financial activities, communications and travel data – also failed to comply with article 8 for the decade it was in operation until it was publicly acknowledged in March 2015.

Source: UK security agencies unlawfully collected data for 17 years, court rules | World news | The Guardian

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4 Comments

  1. aunty1960 October 17, 2016 at 11:01 pm - Reply

    I think we have gone way beyond expecting this govt or one before or any in the future to keep their noses out and not gather our data, actions and communications everyday.

    It may be about managing us like a herd of cows and stock – we are referred to as stock and units.

    or/and it may be that our intelligence services are being used to gather personal habits and likes and dislikes to do with buying and marketing.

    Thing is our intelligence services are being used more for a info pack for corporate branding and marketing sales than really true threats and national security.

    The information from British Intelligence throughout the world now goes direct to a data collecting firm in Texas before it gets to us or even Mi5 or Mi6 Foreign Office, Prime Minister of Ministry of Defence. Outsourced.

  2. philip Burdekin October 18, 2016 at 2:28 am - Reply

    The nasty party are above the law and no one seams to care.

  3. jeffrey davies October 18, 2016 at 6:53 am - Reply

    its gone beyond a joke now but when you ask people about it they like sheep who answer it doesnt bother them oh dear

  4. Roland Laycock October 18, 2016 at 9:41 am - Reply

    Its the start of a new era in the UK its old name was Fascism wonder what the tories call it, But lets face it the workingclass have let them walk all over them if they had any bottle there would be a general strick by 2020 there will be NO NHS

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