BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
user of secret intelligence, including intelligence generated by GCHQ; and
senior independent counsel with the skills and experience to challenge
forensically the evidence and the case studies presented by the security and
intelligence services.
165. In conducting their review, the team had significant and detailed
contact with the intelligence services at all levels of seniority as well as the
relevant oversight bodies (including the IPT and Counsel to the Tribunal),
NGOs and independent technical experts.
166. Although the review was of the Investigatory Powers Bill, a
number of its findings in respect of bulk interception were relevant to the
case at hand. In particular, having examined a great deal of closed material,
the review concluded that bulk interception was an essential capability: first,
because terrorists, criminal and hostile foreign intelligence services had
become increasingly sophisticated at evading detection by traditional
means; and secondly, because the nature of the global Internet meant that
the route a particular communication would travel had become hugely
unpredictable. The review team looked at alternatives to bulk interception
(including targeted interception, the use of human sources and commercial
cyber-defence products) but concluded that no alternative or combination of
alternatives would be sufficient to substitute for the bulk interception power
as a method of obtaining the necessary intelligence.
6. Attacks in London and Manchester March-June 2017: Independent
Assessment of MI5 and Police Internal Reviews
167. Following a series of four terrorist attacks in the short period
between March and June 2017, in the course of which some thirty-six
innocent people were killed and almost 200 more were injured, the Home
Secretary asked the recently retired Independent Reviewer of Terrorism
Legislation, David Anderson Q.C., to assess the classified internal reviews
of the police and intelligence services involved. In placing the attacks in
context, the Report made the following observations:
“1.4 First, the threat level in the UK from so-called ‘international terrorism’ (in
practice, Islamist terrorism whether generated at home or abroad) has been assessed
by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) as SEVERE since August 2014,
indicating that Islamist terrorist attacks in the UK are ‘highly likely’. Commentators
with access to the relevant intelligence have always been clear that this assessment is
realistic. They have pointed also to the smaller but still deadly threat from extreme
right wing (XRW) terrorism, exemplified by the murder of Jo Cox MP in June 2016
and by the proscription of the neo-Nazi group National Action in December 2016.
1.5 Secondly, the growing scale of the threat from Islamist terrorism is striking.
The Director General of MI5, Andrew Parker, spoke in October 2017 of ‘a dramatic
upshift in the threat this year’ to ‘the highest tempo I’ve seen in my 34 year career’.
Though deaths from Islamist terrorism occur overwhelmingly in Africa, the Middle
East and South Asia, the threat has grown recently across the western world, and has
been described as ‘especially diffuse and diverse in the UK’. It remains to be seen
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