GCHQ urged to halt snooping on people with no terror ties

Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)

In a new legal case filed against British intelligence agency GCHQ, activist group Privacy International (PI) has called for an end to collecting information on people with no ties to terrorism and with no criminal record.

According to the campaign group, the Cheltenham-based surveillance agency known as Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is collecting “bulk personal datasets” from millions of citizens’ phone and Internet records using methods even prohibited in the US, UK daily Guardian reported Monday.

The legal claim was filed at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the judicial body that hears complaints about the intelligence services and surveillance by public organisations, and is partially intended to highlight a disparity between US and UK surveillance practices that have emerged following conflicting responses by lawmakers in Washington and London,the PI was cited as saying in the report.

Further elaborating on the legal case, PI’s Deputy Director Eric King said, “Bulk collection of data about millions of people who have no ties to terrorism, nor are suspected of any crime, is plainly wrong. That our government admits most of those in the databases are unlikely to be of intelligence value… shows just how off-course we really are.”

“That the practice started, and continues, without a legal framework in place, smacks of an agency who sees itself as above the law,” King added.

He also emphasized, “Secretly ordering companies to hand over their records in bulk, to be data-mined at will, without independent sign-off or oversight, is a loophole in the law the size of a double-decker bus.”

According to the report, the passing of the USA Freedom Act last week curtailed the so-called “section 215” bulk collection of phone record metadata – information about who called whom, and timings, but not the substance of conversations. The move was viewed as a victory for the libertarian cause in the US as well as a restriction of government snooping powers.

In the UK, however,  privacy campaigners point out that the parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has confirmed that GCHQ continues to collect datasets relating to “a wide range of individuals, the majority of whom are unlikely to be of intelligence interest.”

Meanwhile, the report notes that in response to an IPT ruling earlier this year, GCHQ said, “By its nature, much of [our] work must remain secret. But we are working with the rest of government to improve public understanding about what we do and the strong legal and policy framework that underpins all our work.”

MFB/NN


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