Amnesty International, the renowned human rights organization, announced in a press release on December 9th, 2013, that they had filed a claim against the United Kingdom government in the midst of concerns that the UK’s intelligence authority, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ for short), had unlawfully accessed the organization’s communications. Concerns first arose in June of this year, when former US National Security Agency (NSA) contactor Edward Snowden released extensive amounts of information regarding internet and phone surveillance by the NSA.
Snowden’s disclosures focused in particular on two top-secret surveillance programs, PRISM, which was run by the NSA, and Tempora, GCHQ’s version of PRISM. Though PRISM’s work remains largely-top secret, multiple documents, including a PowerPoint presentation, have been released detailing the scope and responsibilities of PRISM. Companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, YouTube, and AOL are among the companies cited as assisting the NSA with data collection. Tempora functions largely with the same model, and shares compiled data with the NSA. According to information released, surveillance had attempted to focus on Americans abroad or those suspected of being involved in terror operations, but had expanded to include as many as 35 different world leaders, leading to an international uproar.
Brits were particularly troubled by the disclosures, for it seemed as though the UK government had acquiesced to American pressure to surveil its citizens and share collected data with the U.S. government. In the aforementioned press release on the recently-filed claim, Amnesty International cited an inadequate legal framework for dealing with government surveillance, and noted that “As a global organization working on many sensitive issues that would be of particular interest to security services in the USA and UK, we are deeply trouble by the prospect that the communications of our staff may have been intercepted.”
Amnesty’s claim is not the first to emerge in the wake of Snowden’s disclosures. On July 8th of last year, British charity Privacy International filed suit against GCHQ as well, with their lawyers arguing that “the programme is not necessary or proportionate,” and claimed in an interview that “such surveillance cannot be justified as a proportionate response to a legitimate aim.” Similarly, privacy advocates Big Brother Watch, the Open Rights Group, English PEN and German individual Constance Kurtz raised £20,000 this October to cover the entire cost of a legal action against the UK government. In a direct response to UK participation in the NSA surveillance project, the fundraising campaign dubbed itself “Privacy not PRISM,” and filed their claim against the UK government shortly thereafter All three lawsuits – those brought by Amnesty International, Privacy International, and Privacy not PRISM –were submitted to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), a special tribunal set up to examine abuses of power by various public bodies, including spy agencies, law enforcement agencies, and public authorities.
All three lawsuits have requested that the IPT hold a public hearing into these claims, as the investigative body usually operates in secret, with all deliberations and procedures carried out behind closed doors. Director of Law and Policy at Amnesty International, Michael Bochenek, said of the IPT’s procedure: “It would be a ridiculous irony if the IPT’s examination into surveillance that has been carried out in secret, were itself totally secret.”
The claims, which argue Tempora is a breach of the Human Rights Act of 1998, cite Article 8, the right to privacy, and Article 10, the right to freedom of expression, as the legal basis for their claim The outcome of these lawsuits will have ramifications not only for British domestic policy, but also relations with the United States.