BIG BROTHER WATCH AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
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communication would travel had become hugely unpredictable. The review
team looked at alternatives to bulk interception (including targeted
interception, the use of human sources and commercial cyber-defence
products) but concluded that no alternative or combination of alternatives
would be sufficient to substitute for the bulk interception power as a method
of obtaining the necessary intelligence.
6. Attacks in London and Manchester March-June 2017: Independent
Assessment of MI5 and Police Internal Reviews
177. Following a series of four terrorist attacks in the short period
between March and June 2017, in the course of which some 36 innocent
people were killed and almost 200 more were injured, the Home Secretary
asked the recently retired Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation,
David Anderson Q.C. to assess the classified internal reviews of the police
and intelligence services involved. In placing the attacks in context, the
Report made the following observations:
“1.2 The attacks under review were the most deadly terrorist attacks on British soil
since the 7/7 London tube and bus bombings of July 2005. All four were shocking for
their savagery and callousness. The impact of the first three attacks was increased by
the fact that they came at the end of a long period in which Islamist terrorism had
taken multiple lives in neighbouring countries such as France, Belgium and Germany
but had not enjoyed equivalent success in Britain.
1.3 The plots were part of an increasingly familiar pattern of Islamist and (to a
lesser extent) anti-Muslim terrorist attacks in western countries, including in particular
northern Europe. The following points provide context, and an indication that lessons
learned from these incidents are likely to be transferrable.
1.4 First, the threat level in the UK from so-called “international terrorism” (in
practice, Islamist terrorism whether generated at home or abroad) has been assessed
by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) as SEVERE since August 2014,
indicating that Islamist terrorist attacks in the UK are “highly likely”. Commentators
with access to the relevant intelligence have always been clear that this assessment is
realistic. They have pointed also to the smaller but still deadly threat from extreme
right wing (XRW) terrorism, exemplified by the murder of Jo Cox MP in June 2016
and by the proscription of the neo-Nazi group National Action in December 2016.
1.5 Secondly, the growing scale of the threat from Islamist terrorism is striking.
The Director General of MI5, Andrew Parker, spoke in October 2017 of “a dramatic
upshift in the threat this year” to “the highest tempo I’ve seen in my 34 year career”.
Though deaths from Islamist terrorism occur overwhelmingly in Africa, the Middle
East and South Asia, the threat has grown recently across the western world, and has
been described as “especially diffuse and diverse in the UK”. It remains to be seen
how this trend will be affected, for good or ill, by the physical collapse of the socalled Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
1.6 Thirdly, the profiles of the attackers ... display many familiar features.
Comparing the five perpetrators of the Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge
attacks with those responsible for the 269 Islamist-related terrorist offences in the UK
between 1998-2015, as analysed by Hannah Stuart (“the total”):