The UK's bulk interception powers, exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, have been found to be illegal by the European Court of Human Righ

Edward Snowden surveillance powers ruled unlawful

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2021-05-26 17:00:12

The UK's bulk interception powers, exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, have been found to be illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.

In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ - the UK's eavesdropping agency - had been secretly collecting communications sent over the internet on an industrial scale.

It could reassemble the communications, filter them and then analyse the remainder for anything useful to protecting national security.

Campaigners argued that these collection systems violated the right to privacy - and on Thursday the European Court of Human Rights agreed.

The judgement said the system revealed by Mr Snowden simply did not have any proper safeguards because it led to completely "untargeted" collection of information.

In practice, this meant personal information could be seen by GCHQ, even if it had nothing to do with national security threats.