Governments must uphold and extend the rule of law, to protect human rights as technology changes.

On 25 March 2022, the UK High Court ruled that the Home Office acted unlawfully and breached human rights and data protection laws by operating a secret, blanket policy of seizing, retaining and extracting data from the mobile phones of asylum seekers arriving by small boat to UK shores between April and November 2020.

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. In the course of these proceedings, the Tribunal rightly praised PI’s legal team for its dedication and valuable inquisitiveness, whilst also noting the constant necessity for both PI and Counsel for the Tribunal to probe and consider fresh problems and lacunae.

PI’s interventions contributed towards a historic decision from the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which ruled that bulk interception by the South African National Communications Centre is unlawful and invalid. This decision held that secret and unchecked surveillance practices used by South African authorities must be explicitly stated in law so they can be considered and debated.