GCHQ mass snooping broke human rights law

Britain broke human rights law when the GCHQ intelligence agency carried out the mass snooping operation exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

The European Court of Human Rights said spies flouted the right to privacy and ignored surveillance safeguards when they carried out the data harvesting and intercepted private online conversations in bulk.

The court is not a European Union institution but part of the Council of Europe, which Britain is not leaving after Brexit. Judges found by a 5-2 majority that the bulk interception broke Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees privacy.