The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK spy agency GCHQ acted illegally when it engaged in mass-scale domestic surveillance of every Briton’s electronic communications, a programme that was revealed by documents supplied to journalists by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The court held out the possibility of a legal form of mass, continuous surveillance in the future, “provided there are better mechanisms in place governing the selection and examination of the data.”
The UK government has three months to appeal the decision.
Edward Snowden (@Snowden)
For five long years, governments have denied that global mass surveillance violates of your rights. And for five long years, we have chased them through the doors of every court. Today, we won. Don’t thank me: thank all of those who never stopped fighting. https://t.co/ARgbI5PKaa
September 13, 2018
GCHQ data collection regime violated human rights, court rules
[Owen Bowcott/The Guardian]
(Image: Chris Potter, CC-BY)
