Human Court: States not allowed to digitally spy on foreigners

In a ruling released on Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held Britain to account for its notorious mass digital surveillance, including outside its borders. In this case, Claudio Guarnieri and Joshua Wieder, IT security researchers from Amnesty International’s security lab in Berlin, complained to the Strasbourg court about the lack of access to legal remedies for violations of the right to privacy and freedom of expression by the British secret services.

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The plaintiffs specifically complained that their communications were intercepted and accessed by British secret services such as GCHQ. This can be attributed to the British mass surveillance system, including broad powers for state hacking, or as part of information sharing agreements with US secret services such as the NSA. The British High Court already reviewed and partially restricted GCHQ spying activities in 2021. Because Guarnieri and Wieder live outside Great Britain, the Investigative Powers Tribunal (IPT), which oversees British security officials, declined to hear their complaints. This meant that they were denied a proper legal remedy and barred from further legal proceedings in Great Britain.

“Milestone for Privacy Protection”

Strasbourg judges raise Conclusion (ref: 64371/16 and 64407/16) Now asserts that “an invasion of privacy of communications clearly occurs where they are intercepted, searched, examined and used.” Violations of the fundamental rights of either the sender or the recipient will also take place there. The EMGR also concluded that: because the United Kingdom spied on the complainants’ communications in its territory, it was also territorially liable for restrictions, particularly on the right to privacy.

In the mass surveillance of communications services case, the court also emphasized that the plaintiffs’ effort to prove their own complicity “should not be unreasonably high.” In this country, many complaints to the Federal Constitutional Court fail on this point. EMGR came to light Its earlier case law It ultimately concluded that there had been a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the protection of privacy.

Ilya Tsiaditsa, a legal expert at the British civil rights organization Privacy International, Evaluates judgment “An Important Milestone for Protecting Privacy and Enjoying Human Rights in the Digital Age”. Ever-expanding technological possibilities have enabled states to “spy beyond their traditional borders and provide unprecedented access to people’s information and lives.” Governments can no longer assume that digital surveillance has no consequences or that they can avoid accountability by targeting people outside their borders. The ECHR strongly insists that security officials “must be held accountable for the consequences of their actions wherever they occur.”

(axk)