European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 170

January 2014

Big Brother Watch and Others v. the United Kingdom - 58170/13

See: [2014] ECHR 93

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for private life

Indiscriminate capture and sharing of vast quantities of communication data by state security services: communicated

 

The applicants are three non-governmental organisations based in London and an academic based in Berlin, all of whom work internationally in the fields of privacy and freedom of expression. Their applications to the Court were triggered by media coverage, following the leak of information by Edward Snowden, a former systems administrator with the United States National Security Agency (NSA), about the use by the United States of America and the United Kingdom of technologies permitting the indiscriminate capture of vast quantities of communication data and the sharing of such data between the two States.

The applicants allege that they are likely to have been the subject of generic surveillance by the UK Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) and/or that the UK security services may have been in receipt of foreign intercept material relating to their electronic communications. They contend that the resulting interference with their rights under Article 8 of the Convention were not “in accordance with the law”. In their submission, there is no basis in domestic law for the receipt of information from foreign intelligence agencies and an absence of legislative control and safeguards in relation to the circumstances in which the UK intelligence services can request foreign intelligence agencies to intercept communications and/or to give the UK access to stored data that has been obtained by interception, and the extent to which the UK intelligence services can use, analyse, disseminate and store data solicited and/or received from foreign intelligence agencies and the process by which such data must be destroyed.

Further, in relation to the interception of communications directly by GCHQ, the applicants submit that the statutory regime applying to external communications warrants does not comply with the minimum standards outlined by the Court in its case-law.

Lastly, they contend that the generic interception of external communications by GCHQ, merely on the basis that such communications have been transmitted by transatlantic fibre-optic cables, is an inherently disproportionate interference with the private lives of thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

Communicated under Article 8 of the Convention.

 

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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