180
BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
they advised the Court that at the meeting MI5 had indicated that, for the
purposes of IPT proceedings, it would not routinely conduct searches of
“reference data-bases”, being databases containing information about the
population generally (such as the Voter’s Roll or telephone directories), for
any mention of a complainant’s name; instead, such searches would only be
carried out if the data was “relevant or had been relied on in the course of an
investigation”.
505. In their third party intervention, the ENNHRI submitted that the
principle of equality of arms – being a core aspect of Article 6 of the
Convention – was incompatible with the exclusion of one party from a
hearing in which the other participates, other than in exceptional
circumstances where adequate procedural safeguards provide protection
from unfairness and no disadvantage ensues.
506. To date, neither the Commission nor the Court has found that
Article 6 § 1 of the Convention applies to proceedings relating to a decision
to place a person under surveillance. For example, in Klass v. Germany the
Commission found that Article 6 § 1 was not applicable either under its civil
or under its criminal limb (see Klass and Others, cited above, §§ 57-61)
and, more recently, in Association for European Integration and Human
Rights and Ekimdzhiev (cited above, § 106) the Court “did not perceive
anything in the circumstances of the case that could alter that conclusion”.
507. However, the IPT has itself gone further than this Court. In its joint
Ruling on Preliminary Issues of Law in the British-Irish Rights Watch Case,
it accepted that Article 6 applied to “a person’s claims under
section 65(2)(a) and to his complaints under section 65(2)(b) of RIPA, as
each of them involves “the determination of his civil rights’ by the Tribunal
within the meaning of Article 6(1)” (see paragraph 137 above).
Consequently, when the matter came before the Court in Kennedy it did not
consider it necessary to reach a conclusion on the matter, since it held that,
even assuming that Article 6 § 1 applied to the proceedings in question,
there had been no violation of that Article (Kennedy, cited above,
§§ 177-179 and §§ 184-191).
508. In the present case, it is similarly unnecessary for the Court to reach
any firm conclusion on the question of the applicability of Article 6 of the
Convention since, for the reasons set out below, it considers that the
applicants’ complaint is manifestly ill-founded.
509. With regard to the applicants’ general complaints concerning the
procedure before the IPT, including the limitations on disclosure and the
holding of public hearings in the interests of national security, the Court
recalls that similar complaints were made in Kennedy and the Court, having
considered the relevant procedural rules, concluded that in order to ensure
the efficacy of the secret surveillance regime, and bearing in mind the
importance of such measures to the fight against terrorism and serious
crime, the restrictions on the applicant’s procedural rights were both