‘A tribunal is to hear a legal challenge by civil liberty groups against the alleged use of mass surveillance programmes by UK intelligence services.’
BBC News, 14th July 2014
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘Ministers are poised to pass emergency laws to require phone companies to log records of phone calls, texts and internet usage, but Labour and Liberal Democrats are warning that they will not allow any new law to become a backdoor route to reinstating a wider “snooper’s charter”.’
The Guardian, 6th July 2014
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘Seven internet service providers have filed a legal complaint against the UK’s intelligence agency GCHQ.’
BBC News, 2nd July 2014
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘Britain’s security and intelligence agencies should consider how far they are invading people’s privacy when they seek permission for intrusive surveillance, their government-appointed watchdog has recommended.’
The Guardian, 26th June 2014
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘Theresa May is continuing to push for a change in the law to give police and security services the power to access email and social media.’
BBC News, 25th June 2014
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘The government’s arguments for justifying the mass monitoring of the internet are “unconvincing” and based on exploiting “loopholes” in legislation, the former chief surveillance inspector has said.
The Guardian, 18th June 2014
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘Mass surveillance of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and even Google searches, is permissible because these are “external communications”, according to the government’s most senior security official.’
The Guardian, 17th June 2014
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘The case of AB and CD has been widely described as “Britain’s first secret trial”. It would be more accurately described as the latest of a number of creeping moves towards secret justice.’
The Guardian, 12th June 2014
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘David Miranda, partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, has been granted permission to appeal against a ruling that he was lawfully detained under counter-terrorism powers at Heathrow airport. The case – which also involves a challenge to the police seizure of computer material related to the US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden – will now go to the court of appeal.’
The Guardian, 15th May 2014
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘Privacy campaigners are seeking to stop GCHQ using “unlawful hacking” to help its surveillance efforts.’
Full story
BBC News, 13th May 2014
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘Nicholas Phillips on the problems posed by the use of secret evidence.’
London Review of Books, 17th April 2014
Source: www.lrb.co.uk
‘The High Court has rejected all the arguments supporting David Miranda’s application for judicial review of his detention at Heathrow Airport in August last year. In a highly readable and pungent judgment, Laws LJ has some robust things to say about the vaunting of journalistic interests over public security in the guise of Article 10, and the “mission creep” of requirements demanded by the courts for state action to be considered “proportionate”.’
UK Human Rights Blog, 19th February 2014
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
‘What matters more: the leaker, or the leak? Any one of the following, you’d think, might have been the news story of the year, or the decade: the revelation that America’s biggest spy agency, the NSA, has information on every phone call made in the continental United States as well as abroad; that it claims to have direct access to the servers of Google, Yahoo, Facebook and all the other major web companies; that GCHQ, the NSA’s British equivalent, is siphoning off the entire internet and storing some of it for thirty days; that online encryption has been subverted and nothing is safe from government spies. The drift of the stories – which were at their peak last summer, when the Guardian and others first got their hands on Edward Snowden’s documents – was that we’re all being watched all the time. Anything we do online, and any phone call we make, is potentially being analysed by the NSA and its friends. But, as Luke Harding discloses in his book on the Snowden affair, the most viewed story in the Guardian’s history wasn’t any of this: it wasn’t a piece of news at all. It was the 12-minute video, made by Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, in which Snowden explained who he was and why he’d decided to reveal what he had.’
London Review of Books, February 2014
Source: www.lrb.co.uk
‘Two barristers have advised a Parliamentary committee that some mass surveillance allegedly undertaken by the UK’s security services is probably illegal. Jemima Stratford QC and Tim Johnston’s advice (PDF) was commissioned by the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones.’
UK Human Rights Blog, 29th January 2014
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
‘The English court would not adjudicate, either as a question of justiciability or as a matter of discretion, on a claim which sought to characterise the actions of United Kingdom officials passing on locational intelligence to officials of the United States of America for use in drone strikes as secondary criminal offences either under domestic criminal law or international humanitarian law, because such relief would necessarily entail a condemnation of the activities of a foreign sovereign state.’
WLR Daily, 20th January 2014
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
‘The Court of Appeal (CoA) has thrown out a claim challenging the legality of British involvement in US drone strikes because any judgment would be a condemnation of US foreign policy.’
The Lawyer, 21st January 2014
Source: www.thelawyer.com
‘Police and MI5 will put “tailored plans” in place to manage the risks posed by terror suspects when existing supervision measures expire later this month, the Home Office has insisted.’
The Guardian, 18th January 2014
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘There is evidence Britain was inappropriately involved in the rendition and ill-treatment of terror suspects, an inquiry has revealed.’
BBC News, 19th December 2013
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
‘The stalled official inquiry into the UK’s involvement in rendition and torture in the years after 9/11 is to be handed to the controversial intelligence and security committee (ISC), the government will announce on Thursday.’
The Guardian, 18th December 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
‘Last June, Glenn Greenwald broke the story of the mass surveillance government programs disclosed in the leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. In August Mr. Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, was detained by police at Heathrow Airport for 9 hours under schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000. Mr. Greenwald has continued to release and comment on similar leaks since then and recently announced his departure from the Guardian to launch a new journalism venture with eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar.
Our moderator led a conversation with Mr. Greenwald via Skype on the range of legal and political questions raised by his recent efforts. These include the lack of safeguards on government surveillance programs, the individual’s right to privacy, the freedom of the press to publish such information and any alleged threats these exposures pose to national security.’
UCL, November 2013
Source: www.ucl.ac.uk
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