Sir Michael Burton (President) :
1.
This is the judgment of the Tribunal, to which all its members have
contributed.
2.
We gave a judgment, now reported at 2017 3 AER 647, on 17 October 2016
(the “October Judgment”), relating to the acquisition and use by the Security
& Intelligence Agencies (“SIAs”) of Bulk Communications Data (“BCD”),
pursuant to s.94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 (“S.94”), and of Bulk
Personal Data (“BPD”). The issue before us was as to the lawfulness of the
BCD and BPD regimes at domestic law, and by reference to the ECHR. The
existence of BPD was first publicly avowed in March 2015 and of the BCD
regime in November 2015. We concluded in the October Judgment that those
regimes were lawful at domestic law, but that, by reference to Article 8 of the
ECHR, they had not been lawful prior to their avowal. We concluded, subject
to reservation of two issues by reference to the ECHR (proportionality and the
arrangements as to transfer of data to third parties) to a further hearing, that
since such avowal the regimes had been compliant with Article 8. We set out
our consideration of the safeguards, which we found as facts and caused us to
reach that conclusion, in paragraphs 85 to 101 of the October Judgment, with
reference to the exercise of satisfactory supervision by the Interception of
Communications Commissioner and Intelligence Services Commissioner since
avowal and to the detailed arrangements for both regimes governing the SIAs,
which we set out in an Appendix to the Judgment.
3.
The parties were then, and are now, Privacy International, described, and
represented, as set out in paragraph 2 of the October Judgment, and the
Page 3