PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM DECISION
“1. The Court may only deal with the matter after all domestic remedies have been
exhausted, according to the generally recognised rules of international law, and within
a period of six months from the date on which the final decision was taken.
...
4. The Court shall reject any application which it considers inadmissible under this
Article. It may do so at any stage of the proceedings.”
A. The parties’ submissions
38. The Government argued that the applicants conceded before the IPT
that there was no jurisdiction under Article 1 of the Convention in respect of
activities carried out under section 7 of ISA, and they conceded the
argument that the section 7 regime was incompatible with the Convention.
According to the Government they had not exhausted their domestic
remedies as they did not raise the complaint before the IPT that the section 7
regime was unlawful because it contained no prior judicial authorisation.
Finally, they underlined that the applicants had not attempted to bring a
judicial review of the decision of the IPT so far as it concerned section 7.
39. The applicants argued that in their view the IPT was reluctant to rule
on the question of jurisdiction without case-law guidance from Strasbourg
and accordingly, they reserved their position on that point so that it could be
first examined by this Court. With reference to their written pleadings
before the domestic courts they argued that they did raise the point about the
need for prior judicial authorisation before the IPT and that the IPT should
have addressed the matter in its judgment. As to the question of judicial
review, they indicated that at the time their application was lodged with this
Court there was no domestic route to challenge a decision of the IPT. The
judicial review of the section 5 proceedings pursued by the first applicant
following the decision of the IPT represented an untried and untested
procedural step, which they were not obliged to exhaust as a normal,
domestic remedy.
B. The submissions of the third parties
40. In their submissions Article 19 and epic.org explained the
technicalities of Equipment Interference and gave examples of its use,
highlighting its nature as a powerful surveillance tool which was in their
view intrusive. La Quadrature du Net, Mozilla Corporation and L.Roussey
and French Data Network also explained the technicalities and uses of
Equipment Interference and highlighted the importance of effective
safeguards and legal oversight of such surveillance activities giving
comparative examples from other jurisdictions including France. The
United Nations Special Rapporteur emphasised the importance of the right
to privacy and freedom of expression in the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights and emphasised the importance of legal control over
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