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LIBERTY AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
54. The United Kingdom was not the only signatory to the Convention
to make use of a surveillance regime involving the interception of volumes
of communications data and the subsequent operation of a process of
selection to obtain material for further consideration by government
agencies. It was difficult to compare the law and practice of other
democratic States (such as the German system of strategic monitoring
examined by the Court in the Weber and Saravia case cited above), since
each country had in place a different set of safeguards. For example, the
United Kingdom did not permit intercepted material to be used in court
proceedings, whereas many other States did allow this, and there were few,
if any, direct equivalents to the independent Commissioner system created
by the 1985 Act. Moreover, it was possible that the operational reach of the
United Kingdom’s system had had to be more extensive, given the high
level of terrorist threat directed at the United Kingdom during the period in
question.
A. Admissibility
55. The Court notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded
within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention. It further notes that
it is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared
admissible.
B. Merits
1. Whether there was an interference
56. Telephone, facsimile and e-mail communications are covered by the
notions of “private life” and “correspondence” within the meaning of
Article 8 (see Weber and Saravia v. Germany (dec.), no. 54934/00, § 77,
29 June 2006, and the cases cited therein). The Court recalls its findings in
previous cases to the effect that the mere existence of legislation which
allows a system for the secret monitoring of communications entails a threat
of surveillance for all those to whom the legislation may be applied. This
threat necessarily strikes at freedom of communication between users of the
telecommunications services and thereby amounts in itself to an interference
with the exercise of the applicants’ rights under Article 8, irrespective of
any measures actually taken against them (see Weber and Saravia, cited
above, § 78).
57. The Court notes that the Government are prepared to proceed, for the
purposes of the present application, on the basis that the applicants can
claim to be victims of an interference with their communications sent to or
from their offices in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In any event, under