{"id":46829,"date":"2019-07-30T05:13:49","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T03:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=46829"},"modified":"2019-07-30T07:42:22","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T05:42:22","slug":"uk-high-court-rejects-civil-liberties-challenge-to-mass-surveillance-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2019\/07\/uk-high-court-rejects-civil-liberties-challenge-to-mass-surveillance-powers\/","title":{"rendered":"UK High Court rejects civil liberties challenge to mass surveillance powers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UK\u2019s High Court has rejected a challenge by a civil liberties group, arguing that the government\u2019s mass surveillance powers represent a violation of human rights, according to The Guardian.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The civil rights group Liberty had claimed that elements of the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), called the \u201csnooper\u2019s charter\u201d by critics<\/a>, allow the government to \u201cto spy on every one of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The measure allows for mass surveillance<\/a> of electronic devices, including the interception and storage of data by intelligence agencies, without the need to target individuals and justify suspicion in order to hack each device. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberty has claimed this constitutes unlawfully broad surveillance, without effective safeguards to prevent abuse. In particular, they argued that the \u2018bulk\u2019 collection powers granted by the IPA represent an invasion of individual privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data collected under warrants can include browsing history, apps downloaded to a phone, usernames and passwords, and location data. But the group said the warrants don\u2019t cover the collection of this data in bulk, and that the data would be stored long after the expiration of warrants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese bulk surveillance powers allow the state to hoover up the messages, calls and web history of hordes of ordinary people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing,\u201d according to Liberty lawyer Megan Goulding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She called the new judgement \u201cdisappointing,\u201d and the group said they would appeal the decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will challenge this judgment in the courts, and keep fighting for a targeted surveillance regime that respects our rights,\u201d Goulding said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of its challenge to the law, Liberty had revealed what it called \u201cshocking\u201d revelations of UK authorities failing to comply with safeguards against abuse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the group, the intelligence agency MI5 had failed to destroy collected material in a timely manner, and had copied and stored data in \u201cungoverned spaces\u201d without proper controls. In June, the intelligence agency admitted that it had lost track of what data was held, and that it had first learned in 2016 that data was held in such spaces, in violation of its own policies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberty argued that these missteps demonstrate that the agency was failing to comply with the safeguards required by the IPA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The High Court acknowledged the seriousness of those failures, with the judges noting they \u201care very conscious that the recent disclosures made by the defendants about MI5\u2019s handling procedures have caused the investigatory powers commissioner obvious concern and will cause others in society concern too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in a ruling Monday, Lord Justice Singh and Mr. Justice Holgate disagreed that these failures suggest that the IPA itself is unlawful, and said that \u201ca suite of inter-locking safeguards\u201d ensures that the act doesn\u2019t violate human rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Goulding:

\u201cThe court recognized the seriousness of MI5\u2019s unlawful handling of our data, which only emerged as a result of this litigation. The security services have shown that they cannot be trusted to keep our data safe and respect our rights.\u201d

Photo by Anthony M. from Rome, Italy [CC BY 2.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK\u2019s High Court has rejected a challenge by a civil liberties group, arguing that the government\u2019s mass surveillance powers represent a violation of human rights, according to The Guardian. The civil rights group Liberty had claimed that elements of the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), called the \u201csnooper\u2019s charter\u201d by critics, allow the government to \u201cto spy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":46830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[1527,411,337],"class_list":["post-46829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance","tag-privacy","tag-surveillance","tag-uk"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}