Monday, October 17, 2016

U.K. Court: GCHQ bulk data collection was illegal

"Bulk data collection" means "spying of course.  What's astonishing is that the spies lost the case:
A legal challenge against the British government's secret surveillance activities has won in court, with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal judging the collection of bulk personal data—conducted by GCHQ and MI5 between 1998 and 2015—to have been illegal. 
Responding to a claim brought by Privacy International, the 70-page judgment handed down this morning [PDF] found that the spooks' surveillance activities had been taking place without adequate safeguards or supervision for over a decade; and as such were in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
GCHQ is the U.K.'s version of the NSA.

And note the date that the spying started - 1998.  This was three years before 9/11.  So much for the argument that "we need to spy on everyone to catch the terrorists."

2 comments:

Guffaw in AZ said...

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

gfa

Ted said...

Of course "spying" is illegal . If they were looking for information in a legal and above board way it would be called "data mining".

But most people have no idea as to the amount of information about them that is readily available through modern Data mining. If you have been caught "spying" , your biggest problem is not legal or not , It's that you just aren't useing upto date methodology.