BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
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cables and infrastructure owned by United States’ CSPs. This programme
has broad access to global data, in particular that of non-US citizens, which
can then be collected, stored and searched using keywords.
C. Domestic proceedings in the first and second of the joined cases
19. The applicants in the first of the joined cases (application
no. 58170/13) sent a pre-action protocol letter to the Government on 3 July
2013 setting out their complaints and seeking declarations that sections 1
and 3 of the Intelligence Services Act (see paragraphs 100-103 below),
section 1 of the Security Services Act (see paragraph 99 below) and
section 8 of RIPA (see paragraph 67 below) were incompatible with the
Convention. In their reply of 26 July 2013, the Government stated that the
effect of section 65(2) of RIPA was to exclude the jurisdiction of the High
Court in respect of human rights complaints against the intelligence
services. These complaints could however be raised in the Investigatory
Powers Tribunal (“IPT”), a court established under RIPA to hear allegations
by citizens of wrongful interference with their communications as a result of
conduct covered by that Act, which was endowed with exclusive
jurisdiction to investigate any complaint that a person’s communications
have been intercepted and, where interception has occurred, to examine the
authority for such interception (see paragraphs 123-143 below). No further
action was taken by these applicants.
20. The applicants in the second of the joined cases (application
no. 62322/14) did not bring any domestic proceedings as they did not
believe that they had an effective remedy for their Convention complaints.
D. Domestic proceedings in the third of the joined cases
21. The ten human rights organisations which are the applicants in the
third of the joined cases (application no. 24960/15) each lodged a complaint
before the IPT between June and December 2013. They alleged that the
intelligence services, the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary had
acted in violation of Articles 8, 10, and 14 of the Convention by:
(i) accessing or otherwise receiving intercepted communications and
communications data from the US Government under the PRISM and
Upstream programmes (“the PRISM issue”); and (ii) intercepting,
inspecting and retaining their communications and their communications
data under the TEMPORA programme (“the section 8(4) issue”). The
applicants sought disclosure of all relevant material relied on by the
intelligence services in the context of their interception activities and, in
particular, all policies and guidance.
22. On 14 February 2014 the IPT ordered that the ten cases be joined. It
subsequently appointed Counsel to the Tribunal (see paragraph 142 below),