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In January 2023, the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal handed down a landmark judgment. The Tribunal held that there were “very serious failings” at the highest levels of MI5 - the UK's domestic intelligence agency - to comply with privacy safeguards from as early as 2014, and that successive Home Secretaries did not to enquire into or resolve these long-standing rule-breaking despite obvious red flags.
In this episode, we talk to Meg Goulding, a lawyer at the UK-based campaigning…
Content Type: Long Read
We won our case against the UK’s Security Service (MI5) and the Secretary of State for the Home Department (SSHD). The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) – the judicial body responsible for monitoring UK’s intelligence and security agencies – held that MI5 acted unlawfully by knowingly holding people’s personal data in systems that were in breach of core legal requirements. MI5 unlawfully retained huge amounts of personal data between 2014 and 2019. During that period, and as a result of these…
Content Type: Press release
In a landmark judgment, handed down today (Monday 30 January 2023), the Investigatory Powers Tribunal have found that there were “very serious failings” at the highest levels of MI5 to comply with privacy safeguards from as early as 2014, and that successive Home Secretaries did not to enquire into or resolve these long-standing rule-breaking despite obvious red flags.
Human rights organisations Liberty and Privacy International, who brought this significant legal case in January 2020, have…
Content Type: Long Read
Additionally, in January 2020 Privacy International and UK-based NGO Liberty filed a new claim against MI5 and the Secretary of State for the Home Department in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (the “Ungoverned Spaces Case”, this time, the case sought to hold MI5 and the SSHD accountable for systemic, long-term failures in the way they handle and retain millions of people’s personal data. As part of this claim, PI requested that the IPT re-opens parts of the original BPD/BCD. This aspect of…
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on our challenge to the UK bulk communications regime finding that section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 (since repealed by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016) was incompatible with EU law human rights standards.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: Press release
Today, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has handed down a decision in a case brought by Privacy International and a coalition of internet and communications service providers and campaign groups including the Chaos Computer Club (Germany), GreenNet (UK), Jinbonet (Korea), May First/People Link (US), and Riseup (US) (the “coalition”).
The case challenges the conduct of hacking operations abroad by one of the UK’s intelligence agencies, the Government Communications…
Content Type: News & Analysis
In mid-2019, MI5 admitted, during a case brought by Liberty, that personal data was being held in “ungoverned spaces”. Much about these ‘ungoverned spaces’, and how they would effectively be “governed” in the future, remained unclear. At the moment, they are understood to be a ‘technical environment’ where personal data of unknown numbers of individuals was being ‘handled’. The use of ‘technical environment’ suggests something more than simply a compilation of a few datasets or databases.
The…
Content Type: Press release
In a remarkable development in Privacy International's four year legal battle against the UK Government's powers to hack phones and computers on a massive scale, the UK Supreme Court has agreed to hear the London-based charity's case in December 2018.
Privacy International's case stems from a decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (a specialised court set up to hear complaints against government surveillance, including surveillance carried out by the UK intelligence agencies) finding…
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Introduction
A growing number of governments around the world are embracing hacking to facilitate their surveillance activities. Yet hacking presents unique and grave threats to our privacy and security. It is far more intrusive than any other surveillance technique, capable of accessing information sufficient to build a detailed profile of a person, as well as altering or deleting that information. At the same time, hacking not only undermines the security of targeted systems, but also has…
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This piece was written by Ashley Gorski, who is an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, and PI legal officer Scarlet Kim and originally appeared in The Guardian here.
In recent weeks, the Hollywood film about Edward Snowden and the movement to pardon the NSA whistleblower have renewed worldwide attention on the scope and substance of government surveillance programs. In the United States, however, the debate has often been a narrow one, focused on the…
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This week, Privacy International, together with nine other international human rights NGOs, filed submissions with the European Court of Human Rights. Our case challenges the UK government’s bulk interception of internet traffic transiting fiber optic cables landing in the UK and its access to information similarly intercepted in bulk by the US government, which were revealed by the Snowden disclosures. To accompany our filing, we have produced two infographics to illustrate the…
Content Type: Press release
Today, Privacy International, together with five internet and communications providers from around the world, have lodged an application before the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the British Government's use of bulk hacking abroad. Until we brought our original case at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in 2014, the Government had never admitted that it engaged in hacking. Now we are learning for the first time how far-reaching the Government's global hacking capabilities are…
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This piece originally appeared here.
On both sides of the Atlantic, we are witnessing the dramatic expansion of government hacking powers. In the United States, a proposed amendment to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would permit the government to obtain a warrant, in certain circumstances, to hack unspecified numbers of electronic devices anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, across the pond, the British Parliament is currently debating the Investigatory…
Content Type: Press release
In response to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruling today that GCHQ's hacking is lawful, we have issued the following press statement:
"We are disappointed by the IPT’s judgment today, which has found Government hacking lawful based on a broad interpretation of a law dating back to 1994, when the internet and mobile phone technology were in their infancy.
Until we brought this case, GCHQ would neither confirm nor deny that it was they were engaging in mass hacking of…
Content Type: Long Read
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (“IPT”) today held that GCHQ hacking of computers, mobile devices and networks is lawful, wherever it occurs around the world. We are disappointed that the IPT has not upheld our complaint and we will be challenging its findings.
Our complaint is the first UK legal challenge to state-sponsored hacking, an exceptionally intrusive form of surveillance. We contended that GCHQ hacking operations were incompatible with democratic principles and human rights…
Content Type: Press release
Documents released today confirm GCHQ, the UK intelligence agency, is hacking computers in the United Kingdom without individual warrants. The documents contain previously unknown details and defenses of GCHQ's use of "thematic warrants" to hack. The legal challenge in which these documents are being disclosed was brought by Privacy International and seven internet and communications service providers from around the world in response to disclosures made by Edward Snowden.…
Content Type: Press release
The Government has quietly ushered through legislation amending the anti-hacking laws to exempt GCHQ from prosecution. Privacy International and other parties were notified of this just hours prior to a hearing of their claim against GCHQ's illegal hacking operations in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.
In its legal filings, sent to Privacy International only the day before the hearing began, the Government notified claimants that the Computer Misuse Act was rewritten on 3 March 2015 to…
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Few revelations have been been as troubling for the right to privacy as uncovering the scope of the Five Eyes alliance. The intelligence club made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States has integrated its collection efforts, staff, bases, and analysis programs. Yet the legal rulebook governing how the agencies ensure the most comprehensive joint surveillance effort in the history of mankind remains secret.
The little that is known suggests a…
Content Type: Press release
The British Government has admitted its intelligence services have the broad power to hack into personal phones, computers, and communications networks, and claims they are legally justified to hack anyone, anywhere in the world, even if the target is not a threat to national security nor suspected of any crime.
These startling admissions come from a government court document published today by Privacy International. The document was filed by the government in response to two …
Content Type: Long Read
As Privacy International celebrates Friday's victory against Britain’s security services - the first such victory this century - we cannot help but feel the success is bittersweet.
After all, we may have convinced the Investigatory Powers Tribunal that GCHQ was acting unlawfully in accessing NSA databases filled with billions of emails and messages, but with a few technical adjustments the intelligence services have managed to insure themselves against any further challenge, at least in…
Content Type: Long Read
Many people imagine intelligence sharing to be a practice whereby men in trench coats silently slide manilla envelopes containing anonymous tip-offs or intelligence reports marked TOP SECRET across tables in smoke-filled rooms.
While such practices certainly exist, they represent only a tiny slice of intelligence sharing activities, and are vastly overshadowed by the massive exchange of bulk unanlysed (raw) intelligence data that takes place between the UK and its Five Eyes allies.…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Between 15th-19th of September, in the week leading up the first year aniversary of the 13 Necessary and Proportionate Principles, Privacy International and the coalition behind the 13 Principles will be conducting a Week of Action explaining some of the key guiding principles for surveillance law reform. Every day, we'll take on a different part of the principles, exploring what’s at stake and what we need to do to bring intelligence agencies and the police back under the rule of law. You can…
Content Type: Long Read
Bad analogies about surveillance technology pervade newspaper reports, politicians’ speeches, and legal arguments. While it’s natural to want simple explanations to understand complex technology, it does us a disservice when governments, the media, or the courts mislead us through analogies that are inadequate. It is even worse if these analogies are used as a basis for policy change.
Privacy International’s legal challenge against GCHQ’s mass surveillance rests…