GCHQ's Mass Data Interception Violated Right To Privacy, Court Rules (theguardian.com) 33
GCHQ's methods for bulk interception of online communications violated the right to privacy and the regime for collection of data was "not in accordance with the law," the grand chamber of the European court of human rights has ruled. From a report: In what was described as a "landmark victory" by Liberty, one of the applicants, the judges also found the bulk interception regime breached the right to freedom of expression and contained insufficient protections for confidential journalistic material but said the decision to operate a bulk interception regime did not of itself violate the European convention on human rights.
The chamber, the ultimate court of the ECHR, also concluded that GCHQ's regime for sharing sensitive digital intelligence with foreign governments was not illegal. The grand chamber judgment is the culmination of a legal challenge to GCHQ's bulk interception of online communications begun in 2013 by Big Brother Watch and others after Edward Snowden's whistleblowing revelations concerning the interception, processing and storing of data about millions of people's private communications by the eavesdropping agency.
The chamber, the ultimate court of the ECHR, also concluded that GCHQ's regime for sharing sensitive digital intelligence with foreign governments was not illegal. The grand chamber judgment is the culmination of a legal challenge to GCHQ's bulk interception of online communications begun in 2013 by Big Brother Watch and others after Edward Snowden's whistleblowing revelations concerning the interception, processing and storing of data about millions of people's private communications by the eavesdropping agency.
another dragnet ruled unlawful, surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I honestly don't think any of these government-run dragnets (regardless of courty) were ever expected to be legal or to withstand challenge. I get the impression they decided to rush it into service and keep it as quiet as possible so they could milk it for as long as possible before attracting publicity and getting the gavel slammed on them.
They really aren't going to experience any repercussions from it, so it's just Playtime until they get told to knock it off. Maybe if they had some accountability with this game they wouldn't play it so frequently?
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They really aren't going to experience any repercussions from it
They might receive a strongly worded letter.. That should do, right?
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Meanwhile,in the "land of the free"... collection continues unabated.
Re:another dragnet ruled unlawful, surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Always assume that you are being spied upon. Never think that your basic IT trickery of VPN's and browser privacy modes will be good enough.
If it is illegal in your country they may be doing it anyways, or it may be from an other country, (who may be an ally with yours, who may share the data back)
For those of us in Democratic or Semi-Democratic countries, we will need to make it a major issue to force legislative actions to make sure such things don't happen and real punishment for any transgressions. But we get distracted about people with/or had penises using the Ladies rooms, or how some people want to carry a gun during church. In general we have been sacrificing our actual liberties and wasting our votes to elect people we hope will punish those people we don't like or understand.
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VPNs are still very useful. They don't want to admit that they can crack them, and probably require resources to do so. Thus they won't bother with low value targets, and won't be able to use the evidence in open court.
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I am in two minds over this: of course mass surveillance of (mostly innocent) people is worrying and conceptually goes against the ideal of a free society. However, stopping it completely is going to make the TLAs task of protecting us from the ever-present danger of bad actors, whether they are rational/irrational harder, maybe to a significant degree. Those who complain about surveillance are probably going to be first in the blame queue if/when something bad happens and those in charge were unaware of th
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It doesn't work. They fail to stop attacks because they are drowning in data and can't pick out the important stuff. There is no justification for doing it.
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If an agency can "operate outside the law on occasion", it will increase the number of occasions. Bad idea. The agency must be required to ALWAYS follow the law. If the law needs to be changed, then it should be changed by a separate body that has no direct connection to the agency doing the action.
This is true whether the action is surveillance or throwing people in jail or issuing traffic tickets.
When a legally constituted "agency" and it's agents is not required to follow the law, then it will contin
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One possible way to handle situations that are so dire that you need to operate outside the law is to simply operate outside the law... then submit yourself for prosecution afterwards. I mean, seriously, if a building full of orphans and puppies are going to get blown up otherwise, what kind of jerk wouldn't be willing to spend a few years in prison to save them. The jury and judge will probably even go easy on them.
So now what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This raises the question, now what? Does anyone go to prison for doing it? Anyone get a fine? Slap on the wrist with a limp noodle? Do they have to stop doing it? After Brexit, does this ruling even count? Can they stop the program and start a new program doing the exact same thing? Have they already?
More and more these days it seems like the various parties who want to violate our rights have figured out that the laws protecting those rights, including venerable documents such as the Constitution, have no teeth. Legal decisions about rights violations take so long that the program that was originally in question was replaced with another program years ago and it seems like the new program can do basically the same rights-violating thing as the old program and the courts will take another decade or so to find against that program, and repeat. Basically the only remedies are court orders that can be ignored. Eventually, ignoring the court orders could lead to contempt charges, but that very rarely happens and there's no-one to hold in contempt if the rights violation simply changes hands so that someone else is doing it.
So, rather than good news, I think I just find this depressing.
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Absolutely.
Brexit was about leaving the European Community.
The European Court of Human Rights is not now and never has been a part of the European Community.
Didn't your Leave promoters explain this to you very clearly? It was certainly being said all through the referendum and subsequent election campaigns. Hell, I had to explain the point in person to a number of people (including a couple of farmers who are now wailing that they can't get their crops picked, wh
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Good point. I'd actually seen that point answered in another post. It was mostly a rhetorical question. The broader question is, Brexit or otherwise, what power does this court have to impose any kind of remedy?
As far as Brexit goes, I'm certainly not pro-Brexit. It was quite easy to predict it would be a disaster. I'm curious if those farmers, at the time, offered any hypotheses about where their labor was going to come from?
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Of course, if action to come into compliance with the court's rulings isn't forthcoming from Westminster, the court can just bump consideration of other cases down the road, including ones which the UK govt would like to win, because they anticipate a victory of some sort, or payment. For example, A British fishing boat caught one metre over the median line, and impounded in an EU country just might take a couple of lifetimes to get resolved. Wanting to get t
nothing will change (Score:1)
all of the courts in the world can rule any way they want and yet the collection will continue
Jurisdiction? (Score:2)
GCHQ is British.
ECHR is European.
Anyone remember Brexit? How does this apply?
Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jurisdiction? (Score:5, Informative)
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It's the court for the Council of Europe, which has 47 members (as opposed to the EU's 27). The UK is still a member. Indeed the only European country that is not a member (I believe) is Belarus.
Lucky for them given this week's news. I doubt the ECHR would look kindly to a person being arrested by a country he wasn't in at the time https://www.state.gov/diversio... [state.gov]
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Given the US govt's love of extraordinary rendition, torture, etc, I'm not sure you want to throw that stone in that particular glass house.
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I don't live in the USA, it's just one of the links I found explaining the situation. I have no love for America but at least the USA follow some form of process for countries they aren't actively at war with. Belarus literally hijacked a plane and arrested a person who wasn't in the country, wasn't going to the country, and without a process from either the country of origin, country of destination, or country of citizenship.
That said I do fantasize that the CIA is exactly like you see in the spy movies, k
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is GCHQ collecting data going to Europe.
Yes, yes it is.
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So yes, assume any network packet originating in, sent to, or transiting across the UK is well and truly sniffed.
Important distinction there: EU != Europe. (Score:1)
The United Kingdom is definitely a part of the continent called Europe. Just as everything up to the Ural mointains. As per official definition, based on a cultural grouping. (That is where the area of the European tribe of the Slavs and other Caucasians originally ended.)
It is not part of the European Union.
The EU deliberately confuses the two in its publications. Originally in order to declare Russia being "out", in a move as mature as payschool toddlers. Making the Russians suffer for their asshole leade
Too little, too late (Score:2)
I'm sorry this just all seems to be too little, too late. Nobody will be held accountable for it, nobody will lose their jobs, their freedom; well except Assange.
A hollow victtory. (Score:1)
Note all the things they judged "not illegal", despite being clearly harmful and therefore crimes.
The law needs updating, to reflect the reality of who harms who. Retroactively.
ECHR is not an UE institution (Score:2)
Note this is a ruling from European Court for Human Rights (EHCR), an institution that is not part of European Union, and which is often confused with European Union Court of Justice.
Brexit does not impact ECHR
When your org's name consists of uppercase letters (Score:1)
And not much else, then you are probably doing something: Unethical, immoral, or illegal.
That is, if you get referred to only by your acronym (FBI, CIA, NSA, GCHQ) in the media, then you are probably doing all three of the above. It's too time-consuming and tedious to spell it out more than once for every time the organization pops up on the media's radar for every instance of doing the wrong thing.
Shrug (Score:2)
In response, GCHQ issued the following statement: "We don't give a shit to be honest. If they think they are hard enough they can come over here and have a straightener on the cobbles".
International number services (Score:1)