UK court strikes down parts of “Snoopers’ Charter” surveillance law

The Snowden Effect continues, with a British court ruling that sections of the country’s mass surveillance laws are dangerously broad and need to be reigned in:

Three judges at London’s Court of Appeal found that a sweeping data retention law, which allowed authorities to access people’s phone and email records, was not subject to adequate safeguards. The court ruled that access to the private data “should be restricted to the objective of fighting serious crime”; the court also said that such data should not be turned over to authorities until after a “prior review by a court or an independent administrative body.”

The case was originally brought by the Labour member of parliament Tom Watson following the introduction of the 2014 Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act. That law expired in 2016 and has since been replaced by the Investigatory Powers Act, which expanded the government’s surveillance authority further, retroactively legalizing controversial spy tactics exposed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Human rights group Liberty, which represented Watson in the case, said Tuesday’s ruling meant parts of the Investigatory Powers Act – dubbed the “Snoopers’ Charter” by critics – would now need to be reformed.

“Yet again a UK court has ruled the government’s extreme mass surveillance regime unlawful,” said Martha Spurrier, Liberty’s director, in a statement. “This judgment tells ministers in crystal clear terms that they are breaching the public’s human rights. … When will the government stop bartering with judges and start drawing up a surveillance law that upholds our democratic freedoms?”

Why, the moment the government decides to value the rights and liberties of its citizenry above its own lust for power and control over that citizenry. In other words, it’s a pipe dream.

Keep in mind how difficult it is for privacy advocates and reasonable politicians in the US to pass even the mildest surveillance reforms (hell, Democrats spent a year decrying Trump as a dangerous fascist and they voted to give him blanket spying powers anyway). Now, figure into that how the UK typically takes an even more heavy-handed approach to spying on its own people, and you’ll start to see how likely it is that this ruling may provoke any meaningful reforms.