BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
satisfied that there are adequate and effective guarantees against abuse. The
assessment depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the nature,
scope and duration of the possible measures, the grounds required for
ordering them, the authorities competent to authorise, carry out and
supervise them, and the kind of remedy provided by the national law. The
Court has to determine whether the procedures for supervising the ordering
and implementation of the restrictive measures are such as to keep the
“interference” to what is “necessary in a democratic society” (see Roman
Zakharov, cited above, § 232; see also Klass and Others, cited above,
§§ 49, 50 and 59, Weber and Saravia, cited above, § 106 and Kennedy, cited
above, §§ 153 and 154).
(ii) Whether there is a need to develop the case-law
340. In Weber and Saravia and Liberty and Others (cited above) the
Court accepted that bulk interception regimes did not per se fall outside the
States’ margin of appreciation. In view of the proliferation of threats that
States currently face from networks of international actors, using the
Internet both for communication and as a tool, and the existence of
sophisticated technology which would enable these actors to avoid detection
(see paragraph 323 above), the Court considers that the decision to operate a
bulk interception regime in order to identify threats to national security or
against essential national interests is one which continues to fall within this
margin.
341. In both Weber and Saravia and Liberty and Others (cited above)
the Court applied the above-mentioned six minimum safeguards developed
in its case-law on targeted interception (see paragraph 335 above).
However, while the bulk interception regimes considered in those cases
were on their face similar to that in issue in the present case, both cases are
now more than ten years old, and in the intervening years technological
developments have significantly changed the way in which people
communicate. Lives are increasingly lived online, generating both a
significantly larger volume of electronic communications, and
communications of a significantly different nature and quality, to those
likely to have been generated a decade ago (see paragraph 322 above). The
scope of the surveillance activity considered in those cases would therefore
have been much narrower.
342. This is equally so with related communications data. As the ISR
observed in its report, greater volumes of communications data are currently
available on an individual relative to content, since every piece of content is
surrounded by multiple pieces of communications data (see paragraph 159
above). While the content might be encrypted and, in any event, may not
reveal anything of note about the sender or recipient, the related
communications data could reveal a great deal of personal information, such
as the identities and geographic location of the sender and recipient and the
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