The European Court of Justice has issued a major post-Brexit-decision ruling invalidating the UK's mass surveillance powers:
"General and indiscriminate retention" of emails and electronic communications by governments is illegal, the EU's highest court has ruled, in a judgment that could trigger challenges against the UK's new Investigatory Powers Act – the so-called snooper's charter.
Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime – including terrorism – is justified, according to a long-awaited decision by the European court of justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg.
The finding came in response to a legal challenge initially brought by the Brexit secretary, David Davis, when he was a backbench MP, and Tom Watson, Labour's deputy leader, over the legality of GCHQ's bulk interception of call records and online messages.
[...] Daniel Carey, the solicitor from Deighton Pierce Glynn who represented the Open Rights Group and Privacy International, said: "The court is very clear that indiscriminately retaining everyone's metadata is unlawful, which is a point my clients placed particular emphasis on. This prohibition arises out of longstanding EU legislation, which the UK played an important role in creating."
Also at NYT, WSJ, BBC, Bloomberg.
Ruling press release: The Members States may not impose a general obligation to retain data on providers of electronic communications services (PDF)
[Ed's Note: minor edit to first sentence at 232017zDec16]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Friday December 23 2016, @08:25PM
Theresa May is very keen to extract us from the European Court of Human Rights. Although it's not part of the EU, being party to it is a prerequisite of being a member of the EU. When (if) we leave the EU, Theresa May and her fellow lunatic-fringe Conservatives will be delighted to withdraw from the ECHR. Then the real oppression can begin. What's really ironic is the ECHR was a British invention and a result of the atrocities witnessed during the Second World War. Ho hum.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Friday December 23 2016, @08:39PM
Relevant:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2016/apr/25/patrick-stewart-sketch-what-has-the-echr-ever-done-for-us-video [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday December 23 2016, @08:52PM
That's a good one :-)
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].