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takyon writes:

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]

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