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UK: MI5 'secretly collected phone data' for decade

05 November 2015

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"the programme, which sources said was used to track terrorists and save lives, was "so secret that few even in MI5 knew about it, let alone the public".

The government's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, told the BBC the legislation used to authorise the collection was "so vague that anything could be done under it". He added: "It wasn't illegal in the sense that it was outside the law, it was just that the law was so broad and the information was so slight that nobody knew it was happening".

See the article: MI5 'secretly collected phone data' for decade (BBC, link)

And see: The surveillance bill is as big a threat to state security as to individual liberty (Guardian, link) and: UK unveils plan to spy on Internet use, raising privacy fears euractiv, link): "What the British are attempting to do, and what the French have already done post Charlie Hebdo, would never have seen the light of day in the American political system," Michael Hayden, former director of the U.S. National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, told Reuters." also: UK cyber-spy law takes Snowden's revelations of mass surveillance – and sets them in stone (The Register, link) And see: Interception, Authorisation and Redress in the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill (UK Human Rights Blog, link)

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