Amnesty International, Liberty and Privacy International have made an application to the European Court of Human Rights alleging that the UK’s mass surveillance practices are in breach of human rights.
The application follows a decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) on 6 February 2015 whereby it was found that British intelligence services had acted unlawfully in accessing personal communications collected by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Prior to December 2014, the practice of intelligence sharing between the UK and the US was held to be in breach of Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The practice was unlawful because the rules governing the UK’s access to NSA information were secret. The IPT further ruled that post-December 2014 the UK’s access to NSA data was lawful. Previously, on 5 December 2014, the IPT had held that as of the date of the judgment there had been no breach of Articles 8 and 10 (because some of the UK-US intelligence sharing arrangements had been made public), but left open the question whether such breach had taken place before than date.
The applicant organisations disagree with the IPT’s finding of legality and argue that the UK’s bulk surveillance practices continue to breach Articles 8 and 10, as well as Articles 6 (the proceedings before the IPT breached the applicants’ right to a fair hearing) and 14 (the statutory framework governing bulk interception is indirectly discriminatory on grounds of nationality and national origin because it grants additional safeguards to people known to be in the British islands, but denies them to people abroad).
