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There have been calls for reform of Irish and British surveillance laws after the European Court of Human Rights found that the UK had violated the right to privacy. The British government has been ordered to pay €7,500 in costs and expenses to the organisations whose rights it violated.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), the UK civil liberties organisation, Liberty, and British-Irish Rights Watch took their case to Strasbourg over the interception of telephone, fax, e-mail and data communications between the UK and Ireland including between these organisations over a seven year period.

These communications, including legally privileged and confidential information, were intercepted and stored en masse by an Electronic Test Facility operated by the British Ministry of Defence.

The European Court of Human Rights has found that the rules governing data interception in the United Kingdom did not “as required by the Court’s case-law, set out in a form accessible to the public any indication of the procedure to be followed for selecting for examination, sharing, storing and destroying intercepted material.”

Finding that there had been a violation of the applicants’ right to privacy, as guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the court stated that the interference with the applicants’ rights “was not in accordance with the law”.

Welcoming the judgment, ICCL Director Mr Mark Kelly said: “The Strasbourg Court has vindicated the ICCL’s belief that data ‘fishing expeditions’ by the intelligence services will fall foul of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judges have found that the United Kingdom’s relatively sophisticated rules on data interception have failed to prevent unlawful interference with privacy rights.

“This has clear implications for Ireland’s lax data interception regime, which will require a thorough overhaul in order to ensure that it meets the standards required by the European Court of Human Rights.”