Secretive UK Court That Approves Of GCHQ Surveillance Says That GCHQ Surveillance Doesn't Violate Human Rights

from the because-to-say-otherwise-would-implicate-itself dept

Mon, Dec 8th 2014 3:52am — Mike Masnick

For a while now, we've been covering various legal challenges in Europe related to the GCHQ's surveillance activities. One of the main cases, brought by Amnesty International and Privacy International, argued that the surveillance violated the European Convention on Human Rights (specifically article 8, on right to privacy, and article 10, on freedom of expression). While it was always expected that the case would eventually go to the European Court of Human Rights, the first step was the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in the UK -- a secretive court that reviews complaints about surveillance, but (as with nearly all "secretive courts" charged with "oversight" on the intelligence community) almost always sides with the intelligence community. Between 2000 and 2012 the IPT only sided against the intelligence community 10 times out of 1468 cases brought (about half of one percent of all cases). In other words, this is a court that (in secret) regularly okays GCHQ's surveillance efforts on UK citizens.

So take a wild guess what happened when it was asked to determine if such surveillance violated human rights? It said of course no human rights were violated when the GCHQ spied on people. This is not a surprise. Anything else would have been a surprise. To put it simply, if the IPT had ruled in favor of these groups, it would have been implicating itself, effectively admitting that its own approvals of GCHQ activity enabled the violation of human rights. And that wasn't going to happen. But that's not how surveillance state defenders are discussing this result:

A government security source told the BBC: "We are delighted that a third independent body has confirmed that GCHQ does not seek to carry out mass surveillance."

Independent body? Right. It's the "independent" body that has a history of saying the very actions now being scrutinized are perfectly fine. It may be "independent" of the GCHQ itself, but it's not "independent" of the surveillance GCHQ carried out.

The groups who brought this case say that they'll appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which is what everyone expected to happen in the first place. This little rubber stamping by the IPT was just a procedural issue that had to be taken in the first place.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: gchq, human rights, investigatory powers tribunal, ipt, surveillance, uk
Companies: amnesty international, privacy international

21 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 3:59am

We need a court to police our surveillance courts. And once that has been subject to regulatory capture, we will need a court to police the court which polices surveillance courts.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Richard (profile), 8 Dec 2014 @ 4:22am

Re:
It is specialist courts that are the problem.

They are easily captured because the same people turn up on one side of the fence again and again.

Just let an ordinary, general purpose, court decide.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 4:28am

So, UK Gov want to stay on banlist, AKA do not beg me to help them...
OK, can and WILL do.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
David, 8 Dec 2014 @ 4:41am

Bye bye
Cameron has been as forthcoming as spelling out the conditions under which the UK would be willing to leave the EU. They are not even hard to satisfy.

So remove this cancer on the free world from the European Union and then reorganize the communication and the governing law to lock the bulldogs away safely in their own pen where they can sniff each other's butts all they like.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rikuo (profile), 8 Dec 2014 @ 4:43am

In other news, Ireland's Justice Minister just signed into law allowing foreign intelligence agencies to tap into our telecommunications.
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/foreign-law-enforcement-agencies-allowed-to-ta p-irish-calls-653609.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 4:56am

A government security source told the BBC: "We are delighted that a third independent body has confirmed that GCHQ does not seek to carry out mass surveillance."

If you are already doing it, there is no seek.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 8 Dec 2014 @ 5:00am

"third independent body"
That we appointed, pay for, and seek the permission of to blatantly spy on our own citizens. They give it a rubber stamp so we can pretend due process & rights still exist as we curtail everything our citizens do in an effort to stop the "terrorists" & keep them safe. As they had far to many rights, we curtailed them to make the job easier. Pay no attention to the overreach or everything we share with our allies, it is all part of the global vision we have of knowing everything about everyone so no one feels they can stop us.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 5:10am

Re: Bye bye
It is a chain of hostage situation going on on the islands:

- Cameron is promising a vote on EU if he wins next election, taking EU as hostage in his bid for continuing as prime minister.
- ECHR is completely independent of EU and is their main fear in terms of losing the current surveillance, but in a twist EU is being taken hostage in his bid for stopping EUHCR.
- In EU many of the british conservatives are operating the conservative group EU-sceptics. They have been rained upon by gold from the other groups in EU to satisfy the scepticism across Europe. In a bizarre twist the group has now been taken hostage by Cameron.

...

Am I the only one seeing the downfall of Cameron in next UK election as the only way to keep them from completely selfdestructing?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 5:12am

Perhaps they do not understand what the word independent means.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Wanderer (profile), 8 Dec 2014 @ 5:50am

Re:
"And now every Hawtch-Hawtcher in all of Hawtch-Hawtch
Is watching on Watch-Watcher-Watchering-Watch,
Watch-Watch-Watch-Watching the Watcher who's watching that bee..."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 6:36am

Investigatory Powers Tribunal court in the UK sounds a lot like the FISC in the US. Which isn't surprising. The UK basically models their systems on pre-existing US systems.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 8:06am

the court arrived at that conclusion because the UK government has already removed freedom and privacy from the people, so there was no new evidence to present. oh, and dont forget that this was a secret court, doing much the same as the FISC, just giving blanket approval!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
John Fenderson (profile), 8 Dec 2014 @ 8:44am

Independent body?
A government security source told the BBC: "We are delighted that a third independent body has confirmed that GCHQ does not seek to carry out mass surveillance."

I'm curious about what their definition of "independent" is here. It looks to me like they're using the bogus US definition whereby they try to convince us that the Senate Intelligence Committee and the FISC are "independent bodies". In other words, they're lying.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
tqk (profile), 8 Dec 2014 @ 9:02am

Re: Re:
It is specialist courts that are the problem.

I think that phrase is far too charitable. With no-one challenging the gov't, and no-one speaking for the defence, and no-oversight on the court's decisions, this is not a court. It's a captured tribunal, merely a necessary bureaucratic hurdle.

The lawmakers failed us again.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 9:13am

It's 'funny' that all these secretive courts are willing to turn the other cheek when there is no direct accountability...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 9:53am

it wont matter what is ruled in the EUCHR, the UK government has already ignored EU rulings on data retention, a little thing like a HR trial wont worry them!!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 10:54am

Re: Re: Bye bye
and in a bigger twist! Cameron gets kick out next year
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 10:58am

Re:
oh yes it will! they did not ignored EU rulings on data retention they just got a new law in (BTW that set to go to EUCHR aswell and be overruled!) UK government fears the EU that is why they want to leave! wake up! they are very worried!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 8 Dec 2014 @ 10:59am

"Interpretation"
This is becoming one of the most dangerous notions in our language, that we can interpret laws that are intended for one thing to mean another, and in a case like this, interpret human rights to not include a protection from a given behavior. Or interpret the behavior so that it doesn't really violate a human right.

I believe according to that the US doesn't torture, on the grounds that we've interpreted torture to not mean those things we do to people.

(Or we've outsourced our enhanced interrogation so as to allow for a creative use of the pronoun "we").
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2014 @ 2:01pm

just like torture doesn't violate human rights because we said so while sticking our fingers in our ears and screaming lalalala.

There goes the free world into another tyranny
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Zonker, 8 Dec 2014 @ 5:01pm

But can't you just exercise your "right to be forgotten" and have all links to your name removed from the GCHQ surveillance database?
[ link to this | view in thread ]