International Telecom

摘要

The U.K.'s "expansive spying regime" appears to operate outside the law, isn't accountable and isnneither necessary nor proportionate, Privacy International (PI) said Monday in a claim filed in the InvestigatorynPowers Tribunal (http://bit.ly/15r7MWK). The action challenges the government on two fronts, PInsaid: (1) Failure to have a publicly accessible legal framework in which communications data of thosenlocated in the U.K. are accessed after being obtained and passed on by the National Security Agencynthrough Prism. (2) The “indiscriminate interception” and storing of huge amounts of data by tapping underseanfiber cables through the Tempora program. It's reported that the U.K. has had access to Prism sincenat least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from the system in 2012, PI said. Without a legalnframework that lets citizens know the circumstances in which such spying takes place, the governmentn“effectively runs a secret surveillance regime, making it nearly impossible to hold them accountable fornany potential abuses,” it said. That appears to breach the European Convention on Human Rights, whichnsafeguards the rights to privacy, personal communications and freedom of expression, it said. PI intendednto file the Prism case in the Administrative Court, which would have made it public, but after governmentnobjections, filed in the tribunal, whose proceedings aren't public, the organization said. The GovernmentnCommunications Headquarters, which is taking the lead on the case, said it doesn't comment on intelligencenmatters.