EU's highest court delivers blow to UK snooper's charter
General and indiscriminate retention of emails and electronic communications by governments is illegal, the EUs highest court has ruled, in a judgment that could trigger challenges against the UKs new Investigatory Powers Act the so-called snoopers charter.
Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime - including terrorism - is justified, according to a long-awaited decision by the European court of justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg.
The finding came in response to a legal challenge initially brought by the Brexit secretary, David Davis, when he was a backbench MP, and Tom Watson, Labours deputy leader, over the legality of GCHQs bulk interception of call records and online messages.
Davis and Watson, who were supported by Liberty, the Law Society, the Open Rights Group and Privacy International, had already won a high court victory on the issue, but the government appealed and the case was referred by court of appeal judges to the ECJ. The case will now return to the court of appeal to be resolved in terms of UK legislation.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/dec/21/eus-highest-court-delivers-blow-to-uk-snoopers-charter
I'd love to hear the cabinet discussion on this ...