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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
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
Original Submission 1 and Original Submission 2
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @08:43AM
This could have something to do with it:
New tool for spy victims to detect government surveillance
20 November 2014, 00:00 UTC
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/11/new-tool-spy-victims-detect-government-surveillance/ [amnesty.org]
"A new tool to enable journalists and human rights defenders to scan their computers for known surveillance spyware has been released today by Amnesty International and a coalition of human rights and technology organizations.
Detekt is the first tool to be made available to the public that detects major known surveillance spyware, some of which is used by governments, in computers.
“Governments are increasingly using dangerous and sophisticated technology that allows them to read activists and journalists’ private emails and remotely turn on their computer’s camera or microphone to secretly record their activities. They use the technology in a cowardly attempt to prevent abuses from being exposed,” said Marek Marczynski, Head of Military, Security and Police at Amnesty International.
“Detekt is a simple tool that will alert activists to such intrusions so they can take action. It represents a strike back against governments who are using information obtained through surveillance to arbitrarily detain, illegally arrest and even torture human rights defenders and journalists.”
Developed by security researcher Claudio Guarnieri, Detekt is being launched in partnership with Amnesty International, Digitale Gesellschaft, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Privacy International.
The adoption and trade in communication surveillance technologies has grown exponentially in recent years.
The Coalition Against Unlawful Surveillance Exports, of which Amnesty International is a member, estimates the annual global trade in surveillance technologies to be worth US$5 billion, and growing.
Some surveillance technology is widely available on the internet; while other more sophisticated alternatives are developed by private companies based in developed countries and sold to state law enforcement and intelligence agencies in countries that persistently commit human rights violations.
FinFisher, a German firm that used to be part of UK-based Gamma International, developed the spyware FinSpy which can be used to monitor Skype conversations, extract files from hard drives, record microphone use and emails, and even take screenshots and photos using a device’s camera.
According to research carried out by Citizen Lab and information published by Wikileaks, Finfisher was used to spy on prominent human rights lawyers and activists in Bahrain.
Amnesty International is urging governments to establish strict trade controls requiring national authorities to assess the risk that the surveillance equipment would be used to violate human rights before authorizing the transfer.
“Detekt is a great tool which can help activists stay safe but ultimately, the only way to prevent these technologies from being used to violate or abuse human rights is to establish and enforce strict controls on their use and trade," said Marek Marczynski.
Amnesty International will use its networks to help activists across the world learn about Detekt and scan their devices for signs of spyware. It will also engage in testing with its local partners and networks who are considered at high-risk of being targeted by such spyware."
© 2015 Amnesty International
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Links in order of appearance:
https://resistsurveillance.org/ [resistsurveillance.org]
https://digitalegesellschaft.de/ [digitalegesellschaft.de]
https://ssd.eff.org/en [eff.org]
https://www.privacyinternational.org/ [privacyinternational.org]
http://globalcause.net/ [globalcause.net]