GCHQ street art image via George Rex/Flickr
Privacy International is ramping up the pressure on Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US with a new website that shows if you’ve been spied upon.
The website was launched by the privacy rights group following the ruling last December that showed GCHQ collaborated with the NSA to use the latter’s data in attempts to snoop on British citizens which was deemed unlawful by the courts.
As a result, Privacy International are now asking on the internet to sign this online petition to input their information which will then be sent to the courts to confirm that they were snooped on and subsequently request that any information collected by the NSA or GCHQ would be deleted.
Earlier this month, the UK’s Investigative Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that their actions were entirely unlawful in what was the first time that the legal body had ruled in favour of the privacy groups, including Privacy International.
Collective bargaining
Privacy International are basing their right to petition based of the IPT ruling which said Article 8 and Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights had been compromised.
The organisation’s deputy director, Eric King, said in a statement that this offers individuals a chance they could never have if they challenged it alone.
“The public have a right to know if they were illegally spied on, and GCHQ must come clean on whose records they hold that they should never have had in the first place,” he said.
“There are few chances that people have to directly challenge the seemingly unrestrained surveillance state, but individuals now have a historic opportunity finally hold GCHQ accountable for their unlawful actions.”
However, according to Wired, the group have warned that it will be a long legal battle with expectations of a decision expected to come in a few months at the earliest or, more likely, a number of years down the line.
