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Phoenix666 writes:

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which provides oversight for UK intelligence services, admitted yesterday that its judgement made on 22 June wrongly failed to declare that Amnesty International had been subject to unlawful surveillance by GCHQ. The IPT revealed this in an e-mail sent to the ten NGO claimants involved in the earlier legal challenge to UK government surveillance. As Amnesty International explained: "Today's communication makes clear that it was actually Amnesty International Ltd, and not the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) that was spied on in addition to the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa."

The Intercept has obtained a copy of the e-mail sent to the NGOs, which shows that the IPT made the finding that "there had been a breach by virtue of the exceeding of time limits for retention"—the communication files were kept too long. That is, as far as the IPT was concerned, spying on one of the world's most respected NGOs was not in itself problematic.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's secretary general, commented: "The revelation that the UK government has been spying on Amnesty International highlights the gross inadequacies in the UK's surveillance legislation. If they hadn't stored our communications for longer than they were allowed to by internal guidelines, we would never even have known." If the records had been destroyed according to the rules, the IPT would have made "no determination" as to whether surveillance had taken place—its standard way of neither confirming nor denying allegations that spying has occurred.

Shetty went on to point out: "It's outrageous that what has been often presented as being the domain of despotic rulers has been occurring on British soil, by the British government." The rationale for intrusive surveillance of the kind carried out by GCHQ is generally that it is only directed against serious threats to the UK public and society and that it is always proportionate and necessary. It is hard to see how the UK government can seriously claim that Amnesty International is a threat or that spying on them is proportionate.

Numbering Mistake Leads Tribunal to Admit UK Illegally Spied on Amnesty International

takyon writes:

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is investigating the actions of the UK's GCHQ, has reversed itself on its June 22 determination that Amnesty International had not been illegally spied upon:

Responding to a complaint that Amnesty and nine other human rights organizations sent the tribunal in April, it said only two of the groups—the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa—had been subject to illegal surveillance. In the e-mail sent to Amnesty late Wednesday, the president of the tribunal said the unlawful retention of communications it had previously said affected the Egyptian group had in fact affected Amnesty.

The full email sent to Amnesty International:

By Post and email

Dear Sirs

The Tribunal wishes to apologise for and correct an error in its Determination of 22 June 2015. The small number of documents in respect of which the Tribunal made the finding that there had been a breach by virtue of the exceeding of time limits for retention (and which have now been delivered to the Commissioner for safekeeping, insofar as not destroyed) in fact related to Amnesty International Ltd (the 4th Claimant in IPT/13/194/H) and not the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (the 3rd Claimant in IPT/13/168-173/H). This mistaken attribution in our Determination, which has now been drawn to our attention by the Respondents, did not result from any failure by them to make disclosure.

Yours sincerely

Sir Michael Burton
President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal