Britain's mass surveillance regime is directly opposing human rights
Matthew White, Sheffield Hallam University In light of the Facebook data scandal more people are beginning to challenge the web’s pervasive surveillance culture. But few British citizens seem to be aware of the government’s own online surveillance regime – significant parts of which have been deemed unlawful. The UK government broke EU law under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act ( DRIPA ), the Court of Appeal ruled in January. The regime – colloquially known as the Snoopers’ Charter – had allowed public bodies to have access to the records of British citizens’ web activity and phone records, without any suspicion that a serious crime had been committed. This activity took place without any independent oversight. DRIPA was rushed through parliament in 2014 by the then Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government after the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruled that the EU-wide Data Retention Directive (DRD) was “invalid”, due...