British Investigatory Powers Tribunal Rules Prior Intelligence Sharing Arrangements Between U.S. and U.K. Illegal (February 6, 2015) [1]
On February 6, 2015, the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal issued a second judgment [3] in Liberty and Others v. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Others, ruling that British intelligence agencies’ interception powers and intelligence sharing arrangements with the U.S. breached human rights law until last year. The Tribunal explained that “the regime [4] governing the soliciting, receiving, storing and transmitting by UK authorities of private communications of individuals located in the UK, which have been obtained by US authorities pursuant to Prism and/or (on the Claimants’ case) Upstream, contravened Articles 8 or 10 [of the European Convention on Human Rights [5]]” but “it now complies with the said Articles.” According to a news article [6], “[t]he ruling appears to suggest that aspects of the operations were illegal for at least seven years – between 2007, when the Prism intercept programme was introduced, and 2014.”