BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
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operated by the intelligence services of the United States of America and the
United Kingdom.
8. The applicants, who are listed in the Appendix, all believed that due
to the nature of their activities, their electronic communications were likely
to have either been intercepted by the United Kingdom intelligence services;
obtained by the United Kingdom intelligence services after being
intercepted by foreign governments; and/or obtained by the United
Kingdom authorities from Communications Service Providers (“CSPs”).
B. The secret surveillance schemes
9. Internet communications are primarily carried over international submarine fibre optic cables operated by CSPs. Each cable may carry several
“bearers”, and there are approximately 100,000 of these bearers joining up
the global Internet. A single communication over the Internet is divided into
“packets” (units of data) which may be transmitted separately across
multiple bearers. These packets will travel via a combination of the quickest
and cheapest paths, which may also depend on the location of the servers.
Consequently, some or all of the parts of any particular communication sent
from one person to another, whether within the United Kingdom or across
borders, may be routed through one or more other countries if that is the
optimum path for the CSPs involved.
1. Government Communications Headquarters (“GCHQ”)
10. The Edward Snowden revelations indicated that GCHQ (being one
of the United Kingdom intelligence services) was running an operation,
codenamed “TEMPORA”, which allowed it to tap into and store huge
volumes of data drawn from bearers.
11. According to the March 2015 Report of the Intelligence and Security
Committee of Parliament (“the ISC report” – see paragraphs 151-159
below), GCHQ is operating two major processing systems for the bulk
interception of communications. The United Kingdom authorities have
neither confirmed nor denied the existence of an operation codenamed
TEMPORA.
12. The first of the two processing systems referred to in the ISC report
is targeted at a very small percentage of bearers. As communications flow
across the targeted bearers, the system compares the traffic against a list of
“simple selectors”. These are specific identifiers (for example, an email
address) relating to a known target. Any communications which match are
collected; those that do not are automatically discarded. Analysts then carry
out a “triage process” in relation to collected communications to determine
which are of the highest intelligence value and should therefore be opened
and read. In practice, only a very small proportion of the items collected