assertions made by the Government are in dispute. However, the
Applicants also wish to emphasise that this unfortunate lengthening of
the material before the Court should not distract or detract from the
relatively simple focus of this application.1
The s8(4) Regime
9.
These submissions begin by addressing the United Kingdom bulk
interception powers under section 8(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory
Powers Act 2000 (“RIPA”) (the “s8(4) Regime”). RIPA will be familiar to
the Court, as it was the subject of the Court’s consideration in Kennedy v
United Kingdom (2011) 52 EHRR 4. But in Kennedy, the Court assessed
whether so-called targeted interception under RIPA section 8(1) (the “s8(1)
Regime”), which requires the identification of a specific person or location
as the subject of the interception, violated Article 8. The Court found the
RIPA s8(1) regime did not breach Article 8 because, as the Court noted in
Szabó and Vissy v Hungary 63 (2016) EHRR 3, “the impugned legislation
did not
allow for
indiscriminate capturing of
vast
amounts of
communications’” (§69). The s8(4) Regime, however, authorises the very
“so-called strategic, large-scale interception” that the Court dubbed “a
matter for serious concern” in Szabó (§69).
10.
For that reason, the Court is invited to consider the s8(4) Regime with
care. On examination, it neither meets the requirements for being “in
accordance with law” nor is it necessary or proportionate.
11.
First, the s8(4) Regime is opaque. It was not until Edward Snowden
disclosed the extent of the UK Government’s bulk surveillance operations
In March 2015, the Applicants submitted their applications to this Court, setting out violations
of Articles 8, 10, 6 and 14 of the Convention. The document setting out their submissions, in
compliance with the Court’s rules, is 20 pages long. In a document dated 18 April 2016, the
Government of the United Kingdom (‘the Government’) set out its ‘Observations on the Merits’ in
response. The Government’s document is 200 pages long. Additionally, it attached 64 separate
annexes, totalling an additional several hundred pages.
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