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Content Type: News & Analysis
What happened
On 22 July 2021, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) issued a declaration on our challenge to the UK bulk communications regime finding that section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 (since repealed by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016) was incompatible with EU law human rights standards. The result of the judgment is that a decade’s worth of secret data capture has been held to be unlawful. The unlawfulness would have remained a secret but for PI’s work.
You…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Today, the UK High Court has quashed a decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) and held that section 5 of the Intelligence Services Act (ISA) 1994 does not permit the issue of general warrants to authorise property interference and certain forms of computer hacking.
The Court referred to cases dating back to the 18th century, which demonstrate the common law’s insistence that the Government cannot search private premises without lawful authority even in the national security…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The Watson/Tele2 decision of the CJEU concerned section 1 and 2 of DRIPA and the Data Retention Regulations 2014. This contained the legislative scheme concerning the power of the Secretary of State to require communications service providers to retain communications data. Part 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 amended DRIPA so that an additional category of data - that necessary to resolve Internet Protocol addresses - could be included in a requirement to retain…
Content Type: Long Read
Details of case:
R (on the application of Privacy International) (Appellant) v Investigatory Powers Tribunal and others (Respondents)
[2019] UKSC 22
15 May 2019
The judgment
What two questions was the Supreme Court asked to answer?
Whether section 67(8) of RIPA 2000 “ousts” the supervisory jurisdiction of the High Court to quash a judgment of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal for error of law?
Whether, and, if so, in accordance with what principles, Parliament may by…
Content Type: Long Read
On 17 October 2016, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal handed down judgment in a case brought by Privacy International against the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the three Security and Intelligence Agencies (MI5, MI6 and GCHQ).
The case concerned the Agencies’ acquisition and use of bulk personal datasets (‘BPD’) – datasets that contain personal data about individuals, the majority of whom are unlikely to be of intelligence interest, such as passport databases and finance-related…