GCHQ Spies Unlawfully Collected Mass Data for Over 17 Years

Eight years ago British spies had one goal of recording website browsing habits of "every visible user on the internet." The United Kingdom's Government Communication Headquarters - aka GCHQ or Uk's NSA - was storing billions of digital records about "ordinary people" and their online activities every solar day. Whether you were chatting or watching porn, the agency knew it all. But that wasn't all. Well before that, the agency had started to store everything they could detect about British citizens, Americans and others, including people'due south phone calls, travel habits, commercial and financial transactions.

After more than a twelvemonth of legal struggle, a ruling has been issued that says the country's mass surveillance failed to comply with Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. British spies, yet, won't face whatsoever repercussions.

GCHQ'south Karma Constabulary was unlawful

Codenamed KARMA POLICE (seriously?) was only a part of the agency'south global spying strategy. Over a year ago, these revelations were made by the documents leaked by the National Security Bureau (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Intercept had reported [emphasis is ours]:

The surveillance is underpinned by an opaque legal government that has authorized GCHQ to sift through huge archives of metadata about the private phone calls, emails, and cyberspace browsing logs of Brits, Americans, and any other citizens — all without a court gild or judicial warrant.

Post-obit the disclosures, London-based human rights grouping Privacy International challenged the legality of the surveillance programme. After a year of legal battle, the UK'south Investigatory Powers Tribunal has issued a landmark ruling on this secret majority drove plan that ran from 1998 to the end of 2022, without any legal oversight. The IPT is the only court that handles complaints against British spy agencies, including GCHQ, MI5 and MI6.

Critics argued revealing more than Us surveillance was unjustifiable. Today, UK courts establish it ended a decade of homo rights violations. https://t.co/o2ngz68FLG

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 17, 2022

The court said that the bulk surveillance program was in defiance of the Article eight, and "was not explained to parliament," despite several opportunities. Millie Graham Woods, legal officeholder at Privacy International said, "The public and parliament deserve an explanation equally to why everyone's data was collected for over a decade without oversight in identify and confirmation that unlawfully obtained personal data will be destroyed."

Massive privacy concerns, but the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland regime still "pleased" with the ruling

The latest ruling doesn't mean British spies would face any repercussions. It also doesn't hateful that we volition run across any explanation from the regime either.

While the tribunal stated that the mass drove of data lacked legal oversight, it did not rule that the surveillance itself was illegal. "The powers available to the security and intelligence agencies play a vital role in protecting the U.K. and its citizens. We are therefore pleased the tribunal has confirmed the current lawfulness of the existing majority communications information and bulk personal dataset regimes," a spokesperson for the Great britain government said.

The regime is basically maxim it'due south going to completely ignore the damaging parts of the ruling, and certainly won't talk nearly user privacies. But, information technology will continue spying on citizens since that'southward nowlawful.

There it is. It was illegal. Information technology didn't comply with Convention of Human Rights. But, oh well, how about nosotros talk about the new Investigatory Powers Beak that will bring transparent and honest oversight (read: fifty-fifty more intrusive surveillance powers.)