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Content type: Long Read
14th September 2018
Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights issued its judgement in Big Brother Watch & Others V. the UK. Below, we answer some of the main questions relating to the case.
What's the ruling all about?
In a nutshell, one of the world's most important courts, the European Court of Human Rights, yesterday found that certain UK laws about how intelligence agencies can spy on our internet communications breach our human rights. These surveillance laws have meant that the UK intelligence…
Content type: Press release
15th January 2020
The AG advises the following:
The UK’s collection of bulk communications data violates EU law.
The French and Belgium data retention schemes also violate EU law.
In the UK case, Privacy International challenged the bulk acquisition and use of communications data by the Security and Intelligence Agencies (SIAs) (that is GCHQ, MI5 and MI6). That case began in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which referred to the CJEU the questions that the AG is today addressing. The IPT asked the CJEU…
Content type: Long Read
15th May 2019
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 statute “oust”…
Content type: News & Analysis
15th January 2020
The AG addressed two major questions:
(1) When states seek to impose obligations on electronic communications services in the name of national security, do such requirements fall within the scope of EU law?
(2) If the answer to the first question is yes, then what does EU law require of the national schemes at issue, which include: a French data retention regime, a Belgian data retention regime, and UK regime for the collection of bulk communications data?
The AG’s short answers to those…