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EU/UK/Ireland: The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), Liberty and British-Irish Rights Watch call for surveillance law reform after Strasbourg court victory at ECHR

01 August 2008

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ECHR: Calls for surveillance law reform after Strasbourg court victory (Irish Council for Civil Liberties, link). Full-text of judgment (pdf)

"Leading human rights groups in Ireland and the United Kingdom have today called for urgent reform of surveillance laws, after securing a significant victory in their case before the European Court of Human Rights.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), Liberty and British-Irish Rights Watch took their case to Strasbourg because, over a seven year period, all telephone, fax, e-mail and data communications between the UK and Ireland, including legally privileged and confidential information, were intercepted and stored en masse by an Electronic Test Facility operated by the British Ministry of Defence.

The European Court of Human Rights has found that the rules governing data interception in the United Kingdom did not “as required by the Court’s case-law, set out in a form accessible to the public any indication of the procedure to be followed for selecting for examination, sharing, storing and destroying intercepted material. The interference with the applicants’ rights under Article 8 (the right to privacy) was not, therefore, “in accordance with the law”. It follows that there has been aviolation of Article 8 in this case.”

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