UK spying agencies collected Britons’ data for 17 years: Court

UK spying agencies secretly and unlawfully collected and stored personal data of Britons for 17 years, according to a court ruling.

MI5, MI6 and GCHQ collected data on everyone’s communications between 1998 and 2015, according to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the watchdog for intelligence agencies.

The agencies tracked individual phone and web use and other confidential information without having adequate safeguards or supervision, senior judges ruled on Monday.

They did not abide by article 8 protecting the right to privacy of the European convention of human rights (ECHR), they added.

“The BPD (bulk personal datasets) regime failed to comply with the ECHR principles, which we have above set out throughout the period prior to its avowal in March 2015. The BCD (bulk communications data) regime failed to comply with such principles in the period prior to its avowal in November 2015, and the institution of a more adequate system of supervision…

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