US & NSA Accused of Criminal Privacy Violations in Dozens of Nations

[Catherina]

9. Court cases beginning also. This one in the UK by a civil rights group whose rights were violated

News / Law / UK civil liberties

Civil rights group says GCHQ and NSA has targeted it illegally

Liberty asks official tribunal to investigate whether its communications have been intercepted by government spooks

Richard Norton-Taylor, security editor
The Guardian, Tuesday 25 June 2013

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It has made an official complaint to the tribunal set up by the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), a statute which the whistleblower Edward Snowden has shown is wide open to abuse.

Liberty, which used to be known as the National Council for Civil Liberties, has been targeted in the past, notably by MI5. It now believes its electronic communications and those of its staff may have been unlawfully intercepted by the security services and GCHQ.

It has asked the investigatory powers tribunal set up by Ripa whether GCHQ has used the NSA's Prism and GCHQ's Tempora systems to bypass the formal British legal process regulating access to personal information. Liberty claims the right to respect for private and family life, enshrined in Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, has been breached.

Certificates signed by the foreign secretary under section 8 of Ripa now seem to allow GCHQ to get round the restriction that only "external communications" – that is, to or from foreign countries – can be intercepted, because there is no way of distinguishing which messages drawn from the cables are external and which are entirely domestic.

Foreign secretaries have intercepted communications in ways far beyond what the law intended, Liberty argues. It says it is concerned that Britain's intelligence agencies have been able "to evade checks and balances and monitor people in the UK". It adds: "They may be treating internet communications as international rather than domestic to evade closer scrutiny and receiving material from their US partners to evade scrutiny altogether".

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/jun/25/liberty-gchq-nsa-target-illegal