20161007 Snowdens Enthüllungen vor Gericht

A lawsuit filed by 10 organizations challenging U.K. mass surveillance has now reached the European Court of Human Rights

Three years after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden fled to Russia, the fallout from the documents he leaked can still be felt quite strongly. A lawsuit filed by 10 organizations challenging U.K. mass surveillance has now reached the European Court of Human Rights.

Although Britain has decided to leave the European Union, the country would have to separately withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights or resign as a member of the Council of Europe to ignore any ruling.

Human rights advocates hope the court will rule in their favor, in part because such legal challenges have been successful in the past. A decision in favor of the 10 NGOs could impact American intelligence gathering that relies on access to British data, as well as its technical operation centers, which are believed to be located in Germany.

In their court challenge, the NGOs argue that "this case is of critical importance to the privacy of modern forms of communication used by billions of people around the world." According to Caroline Wilson Palow, the general counsel at human rights organization Privacy International, mass surveillance is incompatible with the rights to privacy and freedom of expression that are among the leading principles defined by the European Convention on Human Rights, which Britain has signed.

The case also challenges British access to U.S. intelligence under the so-called five eyes agreement that allows extensive information sharing between Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, British and American officials.

After the Snowden papers the British Goverment said it would change its surveillance laws. But the so-called Investigatory Powers Bill is still worse, but critics have already described it as an attempt to legalize procedures that have long been secretly in place.

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