FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2015, file photo, Edward Snowden appears on a live video feed broadcast from Moscow at an event sponsored by ACLU Hawaii in Honolulu. Europe's human rights court is about to publish what could be a landmark ruling on the legality of mass surveillance. The case brought by civil liberties, human rights and journalism groups and campaigners challenges British surveillance and intelligence-sharing practices revealed by American whistleblower Edward Snowden. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2015, file photo, Edward Snowden appears on a live video feed broadcast from Moscow at an event sponsored by ACLU Hawaii in Honolulu. Europe's human rights court is about to publish what could be a landmark ruling on the legality of mass surveillance. The case brought by civil liberties, human rights and journalism groups and campaigners challenges British surveillance and intelligence-sharing practices revealed by American whistleblower Edward Snowden. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia, File)

STRASBOURG, France (AP) — Europe’s human rights court handed a partial victory Thursday to civil rights groups that challenged the legality of mass surveillance and intelligence-sharing practices exposed by American whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that some aspects of British surveillance regimes violated provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights that are meant to safeguard Europeans’ rights to privacy.

Specifically, the court said there wasn’t enough independent scrutiny of processes used by British intelligence services to sift through data and communications intercepted in bulk.

The ruling cited a “lack of oversight of the entire selection process” and “the absence of any real safeguards.”

The court’s seven judges also voted 6-1 that Britain’s regime for getting data from communications service providers also violated the human rights convention, including its provisions on privacy and on freedom of expression.

But the ruling wasn’t all bad for British spies. The court said it is “satisfied” that British intelligence services take their human rights convention obligations seriously “and are not abusing their powers.”

The court also gave a green light to procedures British security services use to get intelligence from foreign spy agencies, saying the intelligence-sharing regime doesn’t violate the convention’s privacy provisions.

The ruling is not final and could be appealed.

Civil liberties campaigners who brought the case hailed the judgment as a landmark victory against the mass surveillance that governments have defended as an important tool in fighting terrorism.

Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said the ruling “vindicates Mr. Snowden’s courageous whistleblowing.”

“Under the guise of counterterrorism, the U.K. has adopted the most authoritarian surveillance regime of any Western state, corroding democracy itself and the rights of the British public,” Carlo said in a statement. “This judgment is a vital step towards protecting millions of law-abiding citizens from unjustified intrusion.”

Dan Carey, a lawyer for the complainants, said: “There needs to be much greater control over the search terms that the government is using to sift our communications.”

Caroline Wilson Palow, another of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said the ruling “confirms that just because it is technically feasible to intercept all of our personal communications, it does not mean that it is lawful to do so.”

The British government said it would give “careful consideration” to the court’s findings.

It noted that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which was the subject of the challenge, had been replaced by new legislation in 2016.

“This includes the introduction of a ‘double lock’ which requires warrants for the use of these powers to be authorised by a Secretary of State and approved by a judge,” the government said in a statement.

“An Investigatory Powers Commissioner has also been created to ensure robust independent oversight of how these powers are used.”

Rights groups, though, say Britain’s surveillance laws are still far too intrusive.

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John Leicester in Paris and Jill Lawless contributed to this report.</s>Mass surveillance and data collection programs used by the UK government breached privacy and don't meet the necessary legal requirements to guarantee rights will be upheld, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled.

The court has concluded that the UK's mass interception programmes breached the European Convention on Human Rights.The case of 'Big Brother Watch and Others v the United Kingdom' was launched by privacy and civil liberties groups in the aftermath of the Edward Snowden revelations, which saw the former US National Security Agency contractor blow the whistle on surveillance and intelligence sharing programs run by intelligence services in the United States and the United Kingdom .

In what represents its first ruling on UK surveillance programmes, the judgement by the EctHR ruled that the GCHQ bulk interception regime violated Article 8 of the Convention of Human Rights - the right to respect for private and family/life communications - by five votes to two.

The justification for the ruling states there's "insufficient" oversight on the filtering, search and selection of intercepted communications for examination and that the safeguards government the communications were "inadequate". The ruling also states that UK's regime for authorising bulk interception was incapable of keeping the "interference" to what is "necessary in a democratic society".

Bulk interception of data was also ruled to violate Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights - the right to freedom of expression and information - as there was "were insufficient safeguards in respect of confidential journalistic material".

However, the court in Strasbourg also ruled that the way GCHQ shared sensitive data with foreign governments not to be illegal, violating neither Article 8 or 10. Nonetheless, the rulings have been welcomed by civil liberties groups.

"This is a major victory for the rights and freedom of people in the UK. It shows that there is - and should be - a limit to the extent that states can spy on their citizens," said Megan Goulding, lawyer for Liberty

"Our government has built a surveillance regime more extreme than that of any other democratic nation, abandoning the very rights and freedoms terrorists want to attack. It can and must give us an effective, targeted system that protects our safety, data security and fundamental rights," she added.

Jim Killock, Executive Director of Open Rights group said the ruling means the UK government will have to re-evaluate how it goes about collecting data of citizens - but that the battle is far from over.

"The decision should help future challenges because it is the first time that the detail of bulk surveillance programmes has started to be questioned," he told ZDNet.

"For the UK government, they will have think more carefully about how they justify electronic surveillance. Many of the crucial questions are yet to come, but this decision shows how important it is for an external human rights court to have the final word on the UK's approach to privacy and surveillance," he added.

While the court acknowledges that it's important that states are able to carry out secret surveillance to counter terrorism and other threats, going too far with this can also represent a threat to the liberty of citizens.

"The court could not ignore the fact that surveillance regimes have the potential to be abused, with serious consequences for individual privacy," said an ECHR statement.

Those safeguards must take into account the nature of the offences, defining the categories of people liable to having their communications intercepted, a limit on the duration of interception, the procedure used when examining, using and storing data, precautions taken when sharing data with other parties and the circumstances in which it must be erased or destroyed.

Despite the ruling, it may not directly impact on UK surveillance legislation - because many surveillance rules were updated when the Investigatory Powers Act was introduced in 2016.

However, the Court of Appeal - the highest court in England and Wales - has previously ruled the act known by critics as the Snoopers' Charter to be unlawful. Despite this the laws haven't been updated or changed.

Nonetheless, Killock said that Prime Minister Theresa May - who oversaw the introduction of the Investigatory Powers Act as Home Secretary - should take notice of the ruling.

"Theresa May should take close note of the judgment, which is the first step towards restrictions on bulk practices. While the judgment does not attempt to forbid these altogether, it also shows that restrictions, limits and accountability will be a feature of future legal discussions about these laws," he said.
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• German police hacking hit by volley of complaints: Can 'state trojan' law survive?</s>The UK's mass surveillance program is in violation of human rights, the European Court of Human Rights has declared. The challenge was instigated following the revelations from US whistle-blower Edward Snowden.In an extensive condemnation of UK's protection of human rights, the judges also deemed there to be "insufficient safeguards" for journalistic sources under government's surveillance policy.Aspects of the policy, the court declared, breached two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) - the right to private life (Article 8) and the right to free expression (Article 10).However, the court ruled that information sharing with foreign governments didn't break the ECHR, ruling there was no evidence of abuse or significant shortcomings.The landmark case, brought forward by Amnesty International and the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, among others, was instigated by the leaks of Edward Snowden. NSA whistle-blower, Snowden, revealed the extent of British and American surveillance and intelligence practices in 2013.Following the leaks, the complainants suspected that British and US spy agencies may have intercepted their electronic communications.Corey Stoughton, an advocacy director at human rights group Liberty, described the ruling as "a major victory for those of us who think there ought to be balance in the government's ability to engage in surveillance."</s>Europe's top rights court ruled Thursday that Britain's programme of mass surveillance, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden as part of his sensational leaks on US spying, violated people's right to privacy.

Ruling in the case of Big Brother Watch and Others versus the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, said the interception of journalistic material also violated the right to freedom of information.

The case was brought by a group of journalists and rights activists who believe that their data may have been targeted.

The court ruled that the existence of the surveillance programme "did not in and of itself violate the convention" but noted "that such a regime had to respect criteria set down in its case-law".

They concluded that the mass trawling for information by Britain's GCHQ spy agency violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding the right to privacy because there was "insufficient oversight" of the programme.

The court found the oversight to be doubly deficient, in the way in which the GCHQ selected internet providers for intercepting data and then filtered the messages, and the way in which intelligence agents selected which data to examine.

It determined that the regime covering how the spy agency obtained data from internet and phone companies was "not in accordance with the law".

In a further victory for the 16 complainants the court ruled that the programme also provided "insufficient safeguards in respect of confidential journalistic material", violating Article 10 of the European convention, which protects freedom of expression and information.

But it dismissed claims that Britain further violated the privacy of those on whom it snooped by sharing intelligence with foreign governments.

"The regime for sharing intelligence with foreign governments did not violate either Article 8 or Article 10," it said.

Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Agency of the United States, leaked thousands of classified documents to the press in 2013 which revealed the vast scope of surveillance of private data that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.

The documents showed, among other things, that Britain spied on foreign politicians at G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 and that its spy agency collected huge quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shared them with the NSA.

Snowden, who fled to Russia, is wanted in the US for espionage.

The ECHR noted that national governments enjoy "wide discretion" in deciding what type of surveillance is necessary to protect national security.

But it said such programmes require sufficient oversight to keep the surveillance to what is "necessary in a democratic society".

It noted that some of the data scooped up by the GCHQ "could reveal a great deal about a person's habits and contacts".

The judgement is not final, as it can be appealed to the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court.</s>The UK’s mass surveillance program is in violation of human rights, the European Court of Human Rights has declared. The challenge was instigated following the revelations from US whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

The court stated there is "insufficient oversight" and "inadequate safeguards" over the government's 'bulk interception' of communications. Furthermore, it found the UK “was not in accordance with the law” over it's obtaining of communications data from service providers.

READ MORE: Big Brother is keeping 'Five Eyes' on you

In an extensive condemnation of UK’s protection of human rights, the judges also deemed there to be “insufficient safeguards” for journalistic sources under government's surveillance policy.

Aspects of the policy, the court declared, breached two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) - the right to private life (Article 8) and the right to free expression (Article 10).

However, the court ruled that information sharing with foreign governments didn't break the ECHR, ruling there was no evidence of abuse or significant shortcomings.

The case, brought forward by Amnesty International and the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, among others, was instigated by the leaks of Edward Snowden. NSA whistle-blower, Snowden, revealed the extent of British and American surveillance and intelligence practices in 2013.

Following the leaks, the complainants suspected that British and US spy agencies may have intercepted their electronic communications.

Corey Stoughton, an advocacy director at human rights group Liberty, described the ruling as "a major victory for those of us who think there ought to be balance in the government's ability to engage in surveillance."

During an interview with the Guardian, Snowden warned that the practices of UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) were "worse than the US."

Subsequently, Britain has changed their surveillance laws since the legal challenge began, the government claims that the new legislation contains more privacy protections.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won’t tell you.</s>The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled this week that the United Kingdom government’s surveillance regime violated human rights laws. 



The matter first came to light in 2013 when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed British surveillance practices—namely that the government intercepts social media, messages, and phone calls regardless of criminal record or suspicions of criminal activity.

The ECHR decided the surveillance program violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to a private life and a family life—due to what the court regarded as “insufficient oversight” of the selection of collected communications.

The court also believes that journalistic sources were not adequately protected. ECHR judges wrote, “In view of the potential chilling effect that any perceived interference with the confidentiality of journalists’ communications and, in particular, their sources might have on the freedom of the press, the Court found that the bulk interception regime was also in violation of article 10.”

In 2016, the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal also ruled that intelligence agencies violated human rights through bulk collection and unsatisfactory oversight.

A group of human rights organizations including Big Brother Watch and Amnesty International brought the case to the court. The advocacy groups focused on the power granted by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), which was replaced in 2016 by the Investigatory Powers Act in 2016, a bill that hasn’t yet gone into effect.

“This landmark judgment confirming that the UK’s mass spying breached fundamental rights vindicates Mr. Snowden’s courageous whistleblowing,” Silkie Carlo, director of the Big Brother Watch, said in a statement. “Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the UK has adopted the most authoritarian surveillance regime of any Western state, corroding democracy itself and the rights of the British public. This judgment is a vital step towards protecting millions of law-abiding citizens from unjustified intrusion.”

The ECHR did deviate from these watchdog groups with the court ruling that the practice of sharing collected information with foreign nations—as opposed to oversight of the collection itself—does not violate freedom of speech or the right to a private life.</s>When Edward Snowden revealed that the government was secretly collecting and storing mass amounts of our private communications data, he wasn't just talking about the United States government. He also exposed the United Kingdom's intelligence agency (Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ) as doing the same overseas.

Today the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the U.K.'s mass collection of everybody's internet communications data violated privacy and failed to provide sufficient safeguards. The Guardian explains that after Snowden exposed the British government's role in citizen surveillance, tapping into communication networks to suck on that massive firehose of data, 14 human rights and privacy groups filed suit against the U.K.

By a 5-2 vote the court's judges determined that the U.K. had violated the privacy components of the European Convention of Human Rights. The court ruled that that while bulk surveillance can be justified to track terrorists and criminals and protect national security, the collection of data must indicate the types of crimes that would lead to bulk gathering of information, which classes of people would be subject to having their data gathered, and of course, procedures for how the data would be used, how it would be shared, and when it would be destroyed. The judges concluded, "[I]t does not consider that the authorities have struck a fair balance between the competing public and private interests by exempting it in its entirety from the safeguards applicable to the searching and examining of content."

After the court's ruling, rather than taking all the credit for exposing the surveillance to public scrutiny, Snowden tweeted out his appreciation for the groups who have taken the matter to the courts to try to stop what the U.K. has been doing:

Unfortunately, the U.K.'s response to the revelation that they were secretly snooping on its citizens was to pass the Investigatory Powers Act, a broad surveillance law that essentially gives the government permission to do what it had been secretly (and apparently illegally) doing all along. This ruling did not cover the Investigatory Powers Act, but The Guardian notes that the judges appear to take a dim view of the warrant system the new rules put into place, as they also do not require the government to indicate who or what is being surveilled.

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group notes in response to the ruling that the United Kingdom has actually increased its own powers to snoop on citizens post-Snowden. Killock believes this judgment makes it "even clearer that these powers do not meet the criteria for proportionate surveillance and that the UK government is continuing to breach our right to privacy."

Bonus link: Here's what's happened in the world of secret government surveillance in the five years since Snowden blew the whistle on it.</s>British spy agencies broke human rights by conducting mass surveillance without proper oversight or safeguards, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday.

According to the court, the spies were able to find out far too much about people’s habits and contacts, by examining their online activities. It also said the surveillance had an illegally chilling effect on the free press, by monitoring journalists’ communications.

The case was brought to the court a couple years back by more than a dozen human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union, who were frustrated that the revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had not sufficiently reined in the U.K.’s GCHQ intelligence agency.

Snowden showed that GCHQ routinely intercepts, stores and analyzes enormous quantities of Internet traffic—something it’s able to do because so many global Internet cables cross the U.K. He also provided evidence of massive data-sharing between the British and American signals intelligence agencies.

The human rights groups did not get what they wanted from the U.K.’s intelligence services watchdog, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which said GCHQ’s use of NSA-intercepted data had been illegal, but became legal when people found out about it, thanks to Snowden. So the groups turned to the European Court of Human Rights.

The court said Thursday that GCHQ’s mass surveillance scheme was not intrinsically illegal, but its design broke two crucial elements of the European Convention on Human Rights: Article 8, the part that guarantees privacy; and Article 10, which guarantees freedom of expression.

The spies infringed on people’s privacy rights because there wasn’t enough oversight or safeguards regarding how data was selected for surveillance. They infringed on free-expression rights because the system did not include proper safeguards for protecting confidential journalistic material—effectively limiting what the press can do without the authorities finding out.

However, the court ruled that GCHQ had not broken European human rights law by using data gathered by U.S. spies, as the safeguards around those procedures were sufficient. It also threw out a set of complaints about the U.K. Investigatory Powers Tribunal being insufficiently independent and impartial.

This is the first time the European Court of Human Rights has dealt with a case involving intelligence sharing. It has however examined cases involving mass surveillance before, and this ruling is in line with those earlier rulings—the court seems to take a somewhat more permissive stance on the issue than the Court of Justice of the European Union, which has repeatedly stamped down on the practice due to the fact that it is indiscriminate.

Although many people mistakenly associate the European Court of Human Rights with the European Union, it is in fact associated with the Council of Europe, an organization whose members also include Russia and Turkey. The ruling acts as precedent for all of the Council of Europe’s 47 member states.

As such, the court’s rulings are legally binding on the British Parliament. However, the U.K. has since updated its intelligence laws and the court did not take the new legislation into account when deciding if the authorities there broke European human rights law. However, that new law—the Investigatory Powers Act—is already being revised after the country’s high court ruled it broke European human rights rules.

“This landmark judgment confirming that the U.K.’s mass spying breached fundamental rights vindicates Mr. Snowden’s courageous whistleblowing and the tireless work of Big Brother Watch and others in our pursuit for justice,” said Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, which participated in the case.

“Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the U.K. has adopted the most authoritarian surveillance regime of any Western state, corroding democracy itself and the rights of the British public. This judgment is a vital step towards protecting millions of law-abiding citizens from unjustified intrusion. However, since the new Investigatory Powers Act arguably poses an ever greater threat to civil liberties, our work is far from over.”</s>A mass surveillance programme by the UK government breached human rights, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.

In a major case brought by charities including Amnesty and human rights group Big Brother Watch, the ECHR ruled that Article 8 - a right to private life - was breached by a "bulk interception regime".

The case was brought after revelations from US whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed British surveillance and intelligence sharing practices.

An operation dubbed 'TEMPORA' allowed intelligence services "to tap into and store huge volumes of data".

In a ruling published today, the court ruled there was insufficient monitoring of the interception of information.

The court also found that "the regime for obtaining communications data from communications service providers" violated the same part of the code of human rights.

The regime also violated article 10, the court ruled, because there was not enough protection to ensure the safety of confidential journalistic sources.

However, the court ruled that sharing the information with foreign governments did not break the code.

In a statement, the court said: "While the Court was satisfied that the intelligence services of the United Kingdom take their Convention obligations seriously and are not abusing their powers, it found that there was inadequate independent oversight of the selection and search processes involved in the operation - in particular when it came to selecting the Internet bearers for interception and choosing the selectors and search criteria used to filter and select intercepted communications for examination.

"Furthermore, there were no real safeguards applicable to the selection of related communications data for examination, even though this data could reveal a great deal about a person’s habits and contacts."

Three applications - from Big Brother Watch, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and 10 human rights charities - were joined together, and were lodged after Mr Snowden's revelations.

All applicants felt their line of work meant they were more subject to having their communications intercepted by intelligence services.

Silkie Carlo, director of the organisation, observed: "Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the UK has adopted the most authoritarian surveillance regime of any Western state, corroding democracy itself and the rights of the British public.

"This judgment is a vital step towards protecting millions of law-abiding citizens from unjustified intrusion. However, since the new Investigatory Powers Act [the so-called Snoopers' Charter in the UK] arguably poses an ever greater threat to civil liberties, our work is far from over."</s>The UK’s mass surveillance program is in violation of human rights, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. The challenge was instigated following the revelations from US whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

UK government agencies and police have the most sweeping surveillance powers in the western world, with a whole range of tools for snooping and hacking by security services unmatched by any other country in western Europe or even the US.

The court stated there is “insufficient oversight” and “inadequate safeguards” over the government’s ‘bulk interception’ of communications. Furthermore, it found the UK “was not in accordance with the law” over it’s obtaining of communications data from service providers.

In an extensive condemnation of UK’s protection of human rights, the judges also deemed there to be “insufficient safeguards” for journalistic sources under government’s surveillance policy.

Aspects of the policy, the court declared, breached two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – the right to private life (Article 8) and the right to free expression (Article 10).

However, the court ruled that information sharing with foreign governments didn’t break the ECHR, ruling there was no evidence of abuse or significant shortcomings.

RT reports: The landmark case, brought forward by Amnesty International and the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, among others, was instigated by the leaks of Edward Snowden. NSA whistle-blower, Snowden, revealed the extent of British and American surveillance and intelligence practices in 2013.

Following the leaks, the complainants suspected that British and US spy agencies may have intercepted their electronic communications.

Corey Stoughton, an advocacy director at human rights group Liberty, described the ruling as “a major victory for those of us who think there ought to be balance in the government’s ability to engage in surveillance.”

During an interview with the Guardian, Snowden warned that the practices of UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) were “worse than the US.”

Subsequently, Britain has changed their surveillance laws since the legal challenge began, the government claims that the new legislation contains more privacy protections.

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The European Court of Human Rights rules that the United Kingdom breached provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to mass surveillance practices exposed by American whistleblower Edward Snowden.