EU's highest court delivers blow to UK snooper's charter

[muriel_volestrangler]

“General and indiscriminate retention” of emails and electronic communications by governments is illegal, the EU’s highest court has ruled, in a judgment that could trigger challenges against the UK’s new Investigatory Powers Act – the so-called snooper’s charter.

Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime - including terrorism - is justified, according to a long-awaited decision by the European court of justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg.

The finding came in response to a legal challenge initially brought by the Brexit secretary, David Davis, when he was a backbench MP, and Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, over the legality of GCHQ’s bulk interception of call records and online messages.

Davis and Watson, who were supported by Liberty, the Law Society, the Open Rights Group and Privacy International, had already won a high court victory on the issue, but the government appealed and the case was referred by court of appeal judges to the ECJ. The case will now return to the court of appeal to be resolved in terms of UK legislation.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/dec/21/eus-highest-court-delivers-blow-to-uk-snoopers-charter

I'd love to hear the cabinet discussion on this ...

[LeftishBrit]

1. Davis' head must be spinning over whether this is a good thing or a bad thing!

EU court, boo!; anti-snooper's charter, hooray! (one of the few issues where I agree with him).

In any case, nice to know that not everyone thinks that Big Brother, oops, I mean Theresa May et al, should have the right to spy the hell out of British citizens,