LAST week, staff at Privacy International discovered that the UK intelligence agencies we have been challenging in court for years have at the same time been snooping on our data. As a human rights charity aiming to hold these very agencies to account, this is genuinely chilling.
This came to light during a case before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the court set up to hear complaints against the UK government鈥檚 intelligence services. Launched in 2015, our case revolves around the collection, use and retention of data on millions of people, the vast majority of whom are under no suspicion of committing a crime. The data collected includes travel movements, financial records and the metadata of telephone and internet use.
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The court, which is allowed to hear evidence from the agencies in secret, has twice ruled that the agencies鈥� access to these databases has been unlawful. In 2016, it found that because the existence of these databases had not been revealed to Parliament or the public, they were 鈥渘ot in accordance with the law鈥�. Earlier this year, it also ruled that a decade鈥檚 worth of secret data capture has been unlawful, because successive foreign secretaries let the intelligence agencies decide what data they could acquire from telecommunications companies.
In the latest hearing, we learned that not only has data relating to Privacy International been unlawfully swept up by all three of the UK鈥檚 primary intelligence agencies 鈥� GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 鈥� but MI5 also unlawfully captured and read Privacy International鈥檚 private data as part of an active investigation.
Why MI5, which protects UK national security, has been spying on a human rights organisation remains unknown, and is now a matter for the UK government to explain. It must also clarify what changes it will make to the UK鈥檚 legal framework to ensure its intelligence agencies aren鈥檛 able to unlawfully spy on charities working in the public interest.
Some believe that technological protections 鈥� such as the use of encrypted communications 鈥� are the only way to defend privacy in the age of mass government surveillance.
But these are hardly a panacea, offering imperfect solutions while giving acquiescence to unjust laws. The solution lies in a combination of better legal checks and balances as well as privacy-enhancing technology. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.
What drives both solutions is public pressure: people can only exercise their rights if they are informed. Spying on the very organisations that are committed to exposing secret, unlawful surveillance only further demonstrates the importance of such work.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淲atching the watchers鈥�