The case, described as "a watershed moment for people’s privacy and freedom of expression across the world”, is the latest stage in a protracted effort to challenge the UK’s extremely wide-ranging surveillance powers.
United States surveillance laws and programmes are so broad and contain such weak safeguards that they render the EU-US Privacy Shield invalid, Human Rights Watch said yesterday in a briefing and letter to the European Commission, published jointly with Amnesty International.
The civil liberties and human rights organisation Liberty is launching a landmark legal challenge to the extreme mass surveillance powers in the Government’s new Investigatory Powers Act
Liberty has responded to the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, saying it contains sweeping new powers for public bodies to track and hack British people’s communications – while failing to include the most basic privacy safeguards.
Amnesty International has written to all members of the Northern Ireland Assembly to warn that their communications may be under surveillance from GCHQ.
Liberty has welcomed the call of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation for a fundamental overhaul of the laws governing State surveillance.
Liberty has filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights against the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruling that UK intelligence agencies’ mass surveillance activities are legal.
A normally secretive court is to consider whether the Government should be made to release more information regarding its surveillance of legally privileged communications.
In response to a case brought by rendition victims, the government is to release previously secret policies governing eavesdropping on communications between lawyers and clients.