Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/30/1984-not-a-manual-for-statecra.html
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Appeals Court: Britain's Snoopers Charter is illegal mass surveillance and must be urgently reformed
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Didn’t they say they were codifying existing practices when it was introduced? Legality will have no effect on GCHQ et al’s actions.
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Well if the response from the right in America is any indication, this will lead to nothing more than a prolonged effort to demolish/coopt the power of the courts.
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Judgment here for those interested:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2018/70.html
Note this was more or less a formality after the CJEU ruling. That ruling was the result of a referral by the Court of Appeal. This one was the implementation of the CJEU’s decision.
They’ve sidestepped the tricky stuff on this one by stating that this ruling applies only to “fighting crime”.
There is a fresh reference to the CJEU pending from the Investigatory Powers Tribunal basically challenging whether the previous decision applies in the context of ‘national security’.
Because of course national security allows you to do anything.
They could just do it anyway, like here in the US. Constitution be damned!
Nazi Eurocrats ruling over Free Britain? Can’t have that. Brexit here we come.
Indeed! We have our own breed of FreeBritNazis to rule over us. (Who can be relied upon to damn the UK’s upper courts as ‘enemies of the people’.)
Hey, Theresa! You know that bit in the EU data privacy legislation that says you can’t move customer data outside the EU if the destination has privacy law that isn’t as strong as the EU? Extrapolate from there and work out how screwed we’re gonna be once we’re on the outside. Oh, and Just because the US has been getting away with that shit because no-one’s paying attention doesn’t mean we’ll get the same treatment.
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The optimistic side of me says great, they’ve been forced to water down certain aspects due to this and constituents writing to their MPs, campaigning, supporting ORG etc. The pessimistic side (it’s a big side) says they just disregard this and carry on with the worst aspects while the concessions don’t go anywhere near far enough. For instance, will the requirement that all browsing history be retained for a year and made available to 48 authorities through a request filter be scrapped? I very much doubt it, unfortunately.
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