Category Archives: Legal

European Court, Government, Legal, Society

ECHR ruling: Intelligence agencies can harvest data

PERSONAL DATA COLLECTION

Controversial powers that have been used by British spies to hoover up vast amounts of personal information to help foil major terrorist plots do not automatically breach human rights, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.

It said UK intelligence agencies could scoop up data belonging to millions of citizens if there were proper safeguards and supervision.

Judges said harvesting and storing data on the websites people visited, who they called, texted or emailed, and their medical, tax and financial records was not “in and of itself” unlawful.

The ruling will be a boost to the Government, which says collecting “bulk data” and communications information has been crucial in preventing jihadist plots.

Ministers brought in the Investigatory Powers Act last year to tighten up the UK’s use of sweeping surveillance powers and introduced new oversights.

However, the ECHR found that the previous spying regime – exposed by Edward Snowden’s revelations about intelligence techniques – did violate human rights.

In 2013, Mr Snowden revealed that GCHQ, the UK’s eavesdropping agency, had been secretly collecting communications sent over the internet on an industrial scale.

The ECHR judgment said the system did not have any proper safeguards because it led to completely “untargeted” collection of information.

It ruled this had violated Article 8 and Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights – safeguarding privacy and confidential journalistic material.

The court’s ruling related to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act which was replaced by the new Act at the start of 2017.

The court acknowledged that this act makes significant changes to the interception and communications data regimes, though critics call it a “turbocharged snoopers’ charter”.

The British Government has said it would give “careful consideration” to the ruling.

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Government, Legal, Society

Electronic signatures can be written into the law

LAW COMMISSION

SIGNING on the dotted line has been the seal on deals and contracts for hundreds of years. But the supremacy of the traditional written signature could be nearing its end as the Law Commission has ruled that it can be replaced with a typed name or even the click of a button.

The Government’s independent legal adviser has released a report stating that e-signatures can be treated as equivalent to written ones. The report could have implications for documents including Last Powers of Attorney, which must be signed manually, as well as credit agreements and land sales.

Currently many businesses are afraid to use e-signatures because they are concerned they could be challenged in court.

In one case, the commission said, a large organisation has its documents signed manually before scanning them and then shredding the originals, a practice it described as “inefficient”. Electronic signatures can take forms including a typed name, clicking on “I accept” on a website, using a finger or stylus on a touchscreen and using a password or Pin code.

The guidance raises the prospect that an email with a name typed at the bottom of it or even an email header could be treated as a signed document.

The commission has opened a consultation on whether a new law is required to enshrine the legal validity of e-signatures, but said it is “not persuaded at present” that this is absolutely necessary, because the law is already in force. “Our provisional view is that the combination of EU law, statute and case law means that, under the current law, an electronic signature is capable of meeting a statutory requirement for a signature if an ‘authenticating intention’ can be demonstrated,” it said.

The Law Commission says that recent rulings made in the High Court and the Court of Appeal set enough of a precedent for there to be no need for a new law. European law also says that e-signatures should not be treated as less effective than physical ones.

The commission also suggested that, in future, signing could be witnessed via webcam or Skype, something the law does not currently allow for.

“We provisionally propose that it should be possible for a witness to observe an electronic signature by video link and then attest the document by affixing their own electronic signature to it,” the commission said.

In the future, it said, the law could even allow a second person to virtually witness an e-signature by signing into an online platform so they can see it appear in real time.

The Law Commissioner said: “Contract law in the UK is flexible, but some businesses are still unsure if electronic signatures would satisfy legal requirements. We can confirm that they do, potentially paving the way for much quicker transactions for businesses and consumers.

“And not only that: there’s scope, with our proposals for webcam witnesses, to do even more to make signing formal documents more convenient and to speed up transactions.”

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Britain, Government, Legal, Politics

An inquiry is needed into torture

RENDITION & TORTURE

Former cabinet minister David Davis is pressing the Prime Minister to order a judge-led inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the mistreatment of terror suspects – or face the prospect of a legal challenge.

In a major intervention, the former Brexit Secretary calls on Theresa May to set up an independent probe to investigate UK complicity in “wicked” torture and rendition during the so-called “war on terror”.

Failing to fulfil the Tory party’s pledge to hold an inquiry, chaired by a senior judge, into the abuse of captives will mean never discovering the truth about some of Britain’s “darkest days”, he says.

Mr Davis has backed a hard-hitting letter to Downing Street on torture signed by senior MPs.

It comes just weeks after he quit the Cabinet in disgust at Mrs May’s Chequers blueprint for leaving the EU.

He claims that Government inaction following confirmation that Tony Blair’s New Labour and the security services colluded with the US’s torture programme after 9/11 also contributed to his decision to walk out.

Mr Davis condemns Mrs May for hindering the search for the truth by preventing British agents from giving crucial evidence to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

He says: “If the Government rejects the cross-party calls then they will open themselves up to being challenged in the courts. That is an outcome none of us wants to see. We have to hope common sense prevails.”

He also says it was “amazing” that Mr Blair and his ministers appeared not to have questioned spy chiefs about their actions, which raised the prospect that they were “deliberately avoiding asking them to maintain deniability”.

The letter, written by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Rendition, argues that a judge-led inquiry is the “only way to get to the bottom of this shameful episode in our recent history and draw a line under it”.

A damning ISC report in June said British spy chiefs tolerated “inexcusable” mistreatment of terror suspects in the years after 9/11. The 152-page dossier, which took three years to compile, laid bare in unprecedented detail the UK’s complicity in torture and “extraordinary rendition”, where suspects are flown to another country for imprisonment and interrogation.

Mrs May said the security and intelligence agencies “regretted” not recognising sooner the “unacceptable practices”. But the Government said only that it would give “careful consideration” to holding a judge-led inquiry and make a decision within 60 days – around August 27.

Former prime minister David Cameron supported such an inquiry and appointed judge Sir Peter Gibson in 2010 but the probe was scrapped in 2012 before completing his work.

A spokesperson for the human rights charity Reprieve said: “The Prime Minister should listen to her colleagues and call an independent judge-led inquiry, to ensure Britain learns from its mistakes.”

MR Davis says any government that permits UK involvement in torture should be held to firmly account. Unfortunately, he declared, this has not happened in cases where UK ministers and officials got mixed up in “war on terror”- era torture.

That is why Theresa May should deliver on the Government’s long-standing commitment to launch an independent judge-led inquiry into these matters. That is the only way we can ensure we don’t become complicit ever again.

The reports revealed Tony Blair’s ministers planned and bankrolled score of illegal kidnap operations and allowed the UK to become involved in hundreds of cases where officials knew of or suspected abuse.

In one incident cited an MI6 officer took part in the questioning of a detainee alongside US personnel before witnessing the man being driven in a “6ft sealed box” to be illegally rendered on an American plane.

The report also details the account of one British agent describing an American “Torture Centre” in Iraq, to which the UK military were no longer allowed to send detainees as a result of what went on there.

In what the ISC report condemns as an unacceptable “workaround”, MI6 simply took detainees held there to an adjacent cabin, where they could be interviewed, before being sent back to their abuse.

In another incident, an MI6 officer was assisting with a US interrogation – until being asked to leave the room, so that the US official could “rough up” the detainee without any witnesses present. When the UK officer returned, the ISC report describes the detainee as visibly hurt.

These revelations, Mr Davis says, represent only the tip of the iceberg, as the Parliamentary committee investigating UK involvement in torture was barred by Downing Street from following critical leads.

Roadblocks thrown up by No 10 meant the ISC was able to question 13 times fewer witnesses than it sought. This led to its chairman, in his own words, to “draw a line” under the committee’s efforts.

This interference by government means that despite the reports’ damning findings there are too many gaps and unanswered questions. The need for a full, independent, judge-led inquiry is clear.

When the Conservatives entered government in 2010, the party rightly promised that it would get to the bottom of Britain’s involvement in these practices, and make whatever changes were needed to stop them happening again. The job has been started, but it remains incomplete. Mr Davis says this is not about blaming individuals who were undoubtedly operating under extreme and highly pressured conditions, but that we will never be able to understand what those on the ground understood their orders to be unless they can be asked.

What were they being told? What information were they feeding back? And what questions were they raising with their supporters?

 

ALSO central to understand is what ministers at the time knew about the operations they were signing off on. Amazingly, it seems that they were not asking questions of the agencies about what was being sanctioned.

Did they fail to do this because they wrongly assumed everything was in order? Or were they deliberately avoiding asking them to maintain deniability?

An inquiry into these issues must be led by someone untainted by a connection to the intelligence services. It is also clear that the chair must have full legal powers to compel the production of evidence.

Measures will, of course, need to put in place to protect genuinely sensitive material, but it is perfectly possible for this to be done while ensuring that relevant testimony is publicly heard.

If the Government rejects the cross-party calls then they will open themselves up to being challenged in the courts.

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