(RINF) – In a major victory for civil rights activists, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the body which considers complaints about UK government surveillance, has held GCHQ guilty of illegal surveillance and monitoring of privileged attorney-client communications. Coming down heavily on the agency, the Tribunal has also directed it to destroy all material it collected as a result.
The messages to be destroyed are communications belonging to Libya rendition victim, Sami-al-Saadi. Saadi, a fierce Gaddafi critic, was captured in a joint CIA-MI6 ‘rendition’ operation in 2004 in Libya, along with his wife and children between the ages of 6 and 12.
This is the first time in the tribunal’s fifteen-year long history that it has upheld a complaint against the government’s snooping arm, and also the first time that it has ordered a surveillance agency to destroy surveillance material.
Civil rights crusaders have, for years, been alleging that the GCHQ has been indulging in illegal snooping.
Mr Justice Burton who chaired the tribunal, directed the GCHQ to give an undertaking that parts of the documents must be “destroyed or deleted to render such information inaccessible in the future.” The GCHQ has also been asked to submit a secret report within 14 days confirming the destruction of these documents.
A hard copy of the documents would be handed to the Commissioner for Interception of Communications within 7 days, where it will be kept safe for five years in the event of any further legal proceedings in the matter…
