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by dane-pgp 1372 days ago
I'd be interested to know if the EU law that the ECJ relied on differs from or goes further than the case law from the European Court of Human Rights that the UK is still a member of.

A ruling against mass data retention in the UK could help Privacy International in their on-going case against the government for its mass surveillance and use of "bulk personal datasets".

https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/4598/briefing...
2 comments
gpderetta 1372 days ago
Mass data retention and surveillance has been ruled illegal multiple times both by ECJ and ECHR (as it is in direct contravention with the right to privacy in article 8). In particular UK is still supposedly bound by the ECHR even after Brexit. Unsurprisingly, EU governments and UK in particular, do not care, and there is only so much these courts can do to enforce their judgments.
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tgsovlerkhgsel 1372 days ago
Doesn't sound great:

"allows, for the purposes of safeguarding national security, an instruction to be given requiring providers of electronic communications services to retain, generally and indiscriminately, traffic and location data in situations where the Member State concerned is confronted with a serious threat to national security that is shown to be genuine and present or foreseeable. Such an instruction must be subject to effective review, either by a court or by an independent administrative body, and can be given only for a period that is limited in time to what is strictly necessary, but which may be extended if that threat persists"

-- that is just asking for a "perma-emergency" to justify such an exception for a long time until the court can (years later) maybe decide that that goes go far.

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dane-pgp 1372 days ago
> just asking for a "perma-emergency" to justify such an exception for a long time

For context, I thought I'd look up the current UK "National Threat Level", and it is apparently "Substantial", which is the middle value on a 5 point scale, and the lowest it has ever been since the system was introduced in 2006.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels

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