Big Brother Watch and Others v UK: Lessons from the Latest Strasbourg Ruling on Bulk Surveillance

A United Kingdom masssurveillance law, allowing for bulk interception by intelligence agencies and data sharing with foreign counterparts, violated both Article 8 and Article 10 of the EuropeanConvention onHuman Rights. The EuropeanCourt of Human Rights(ECtHR) found that, inter alia, the lack of oversight of the entire selection process and the absence of any real safeguards applicable to the selection of related communications data for the examination constitute a violation of the right to privacy. Although the ECtHR did not find a violation of Article 8 in relation to intelligence data sharing, it is important that it acknowledged for the first time its importance and stressed that the minimum requirements it has developed for gathering data also apply to sharing the data.