LONDON (Reuters) – The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that the United Kingdom had breached fundamental human rights with its bulk interception of communications.
Revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden showed that British and U.S. spy agencies GCHQ and the NSA were sucking up vast amounts of communications from across the world.
The Strasbourg-based court ruled in a case known as “Big Brother Watch and Others v. the United Kingdom” that the United Kingdom had breached the right to respect for private and family life communications and the right to freedom of expression with its bulk intercept regime.
The regime for obtaining communications data from service providers was also found to have violated human rights, the court said.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alistair Smout)
