A recent ruling by the United Kingdom’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has confirmed that British intelligence services acted unlawfully in accessing the personal digital communications of millions of people collected by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States.
This ruling has been hailed by transparency and human rights groups as a major victory for their cause, not least because it a first by the IPT into the affairs of the country’s intelligence and security services represented by the GHCQ, MI5 and MI6.
The IPT is the only court that investigates and determines complaints of unlawful use of convert techniques by public authorities that violate the privacy and human rights of citizens.
While a ruling by the IPT does not impose any specific punishment on the guilty, the naming and shaming of the intelligence agencies that have remained tightlipped about the extent of mass surveillance — and by another public institution at that — sets a powerful precedent in future rulings in courts not just in the U.K., but elsewhere too.
The claimants in this case are Privacy International, Bytes for All, Liberty and Amnesty International. The groups will now ask the court to confirm whether their communications were unlawfully collected prior to December 2014 and, if so, demand their immediate deletion.
The Tribunal order states that intelligence sharing between the US and UK was unlawful prior to December 1914. The U.K. had access to the NSA’s PRISM and UPSTREAM programmes, known only after NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden put documents relating to the NSA-GCHQ relationship into the public domain.
“This ruling is significant because it is the first time that the GCHQ have been held accountable for their action,” Mark Rispoli, a spokesperson for Privacy International told The Hindu .
“It allows for citizens around the world to take action to find out if prior to December 2014 any of their communications were shared unlawfully with the GCHQ, and if that were the case, to be able to seek their deletion from the GCHQ database. That is incredibly important and empowering for people.”
Equally importantly, the ruling vindicates Edward Snowden’s actions. “Since the Snowden revelations of June 2013, there have been questions on whether or not his actions were right. The IPT ruling vindicates his decision to blow the whistle on the NSA,” Mr. Rispoli said.
