{"id":144094,"date":"2015-03-04T14:09:43","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T14:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=144094"},"modified":"2015-03-04T14:09:43","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T14:09:43","slug":"supreme-court-police-retention-data-peaceful-protester-breaches-privacy-rights-justified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-police-retention-data-peaceful-protester-breaches-privacy-rights-justified\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court: Police retention of data on peaceful protester breaches privacy rights, but is justified"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melanie Newman<\/em><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has confirmed<\/a> that where the state\u00a0retains data on individuals\u00a0without their consent, it is breaching their privacy rights, even when that data is public.<\/p>\n

But despite this finding the court ruled that the Metropolitan Police acted lawfully\u00a0by keeping details of the activities of a\u00a090-year-old pensioner with no criminal record\u00a0as\u00a0the interference with his private life was\u00a0\u201cminor\u201d.<\/p>\n

The pensioner John Catt, had launched legal action four years ago after discovering that police had secretly logged his habit of drawing sketches of demonstrations he had attended, and descriptions of his appearance and clothing. He wanted to force the Met\u00a0to destroy this data.<\/p>\n

Last year the\u00a0Court of Appeal found<\/a>\u00a0in favour of Catt. It\u00a0said\u00a0the police had not demonstrated how the data on Catt could help crime-fighting and that such\u00a0storage of personal\u00a0data involved \u201ca significant interference\u201d with privacy rights.<\/p>\n

Reversing that decision today, the Supreme Court said\u00a0it was satisfied that the Met\u2019s data-handling regime, under which information\u00a0was \u201cregularly reviewed for deletion\u201d meant there was no significant interference.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Supreme Court then\u00a0went on to say\u00a0the amount of labour required to delete\u00a0information relating to persons such as Mr Catt from the database would be disproportionate.<\/p>\n

Mr Catt is now applying for permission to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.<\/p>\n

In a press statement released by his lawyers, he said: \u201cI cannot agree that the police in this country should be trusted with information about innocent people\u2019s lawful political activities. In my view, without a new system of rules governing police surveillance, there is too much scope for the police to abuse their powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campaign group Netpol, which intervened in the Supreme Court hearing by providing evidence, has described<\/a>the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling as \u201cjudicial approval for the mass surveillance of UK protest\u201d.<\/p>\n

However the\u00a0Court\u2019s confirmation that collection of data on a searchable database breaches personal privacy may be helpful to other cases challenging\u00a0the GCHQ\u2019s bulk collection of\u00a0communications data from internet cable taps.<\/p>\n

Barrister Conor McCarthy said: \u201d\u00a0The Court was unanimous in finding that the\u00a0systematic retention of personal information by the police in itself interferes with an individual\u2019s right to private life under Article\u00a08\u00a0of the European Convention on Human Rights\u00a0and therefore required justification. \u00a0The judgement illustrates that any such justification will be carefully scrutinised by\u00a0the courts.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThe Court\u2019s confirmation that the mere retention of data falls within Article 8 and requires justification if it is to be lawful\u00a0has potentially important ramifications for other cases, especially those relating to the mass interception, collation and retention\u00a0of communications data.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is challenging GCHQ\u2019s\u00a0cable-tapping programme, known as Tempora, in the European Court of Human Rights, on the grounds that it breaches privacy rights and also limits journalists\u2019 ability to protect their sources.<\/p>\n

The government must respond to the Bureau\u2019s case by May 6. It\u00a0will need to convince the European court that the pivacy breaches caused by the bulk data collection are proportionate and justified.<\/p>\n

Sir David Omand, a former head of GCHQ, has previously\u00a0compared the agency\u2019s searches\u00a0of bulk data by GCHQ to\u00a0automated\u00a0audit systems used by banks to search for potentially\u00a0fraudulent\u00a0transactions.<\/p>\n

Speaking at\u00a0a debate<\/a> on the London School of Economics in January 2015 he said: \u201cDo I worry that the bank\u2019s computers are looking at my most intimate details? No I don\u2019t, I get a benefit, the bank gets a benefit.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I worry that GCHQ\u2019s computers are whizzing through my data looking for somebody else\u2019s data that they have a reason to suspect they ought to look at? No I don\u2019t. There\u2019s almost a philosophical question we need to address there.\u201d<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melanie Newman The Supreme Court has confirmed that where the state\u00a0retains data on individuals\u00a0without their consent, it is breaching their privacy rights, even when that data is public. But despite this finding the court ruled that the Metropolitan Police acted lawfully\u00a0by keeping details of the activities of a\u00a090-year-old pensioner with no criminal record\u00a0as\u00a0the interference with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-144094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}