Amnesty takes legal action against US, UK eavesdropping

An international human rights group is taking a legal action against the US and UK governments over their mass surveillance programs.

The UK-based Amnesty International says a group of human rights campaigners will head to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Friday to challenge “the lawfulness of indiscriminate mass surveillance by American and British spy agencies".

"Every legal avenue in the UK has been exhausted", Amnesty said.

“Instead of an open debate, we have seen legislation rushed through without normal parliamentary scrutiny, secret court hearings and absolutely no proper independent oversight to hold the spies to account", Kate Allen, Amnesty UK director said.

In 2013, US whistleblower, Edward Snowden leaked top-secret documents showing the US-UK nexus in snooping millions of personal data worldwide. The US National Security Agency, NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ have been under scrutiny ever since the revelations. The two agencies are accused of eavesdropping on not only some of the top world leaders but even ordinary citizens.

“We in England have accepted the fact the government is engaged in mass surveillance of all of us all the time. When you walk on the streets in Britain, there are hundreds of cameras watching everything you do. Your phone is tapped in the so-called free country. Everything you do is monitored by the state”, William Spring, a London-based human rights activist told Press TV.

The UK government, has so far, issued a robust defense of its spy networks against any legal move. In line with the government policy, a recent parliamentary committee report also found that the intelligence agencies did not seek to circumvent the law.

"Given the extent of targeting and filtering involved, it is evident that while GCHQ's bulk interception capability may involve large numbers of emails, it does not equate to indiscriminate surveillance," the committee said.

Some rights activists doubt a legal challenge could bring any result.

“I can be extremely difficult to get any satisfactory answer from the European Court of Human Rights. The US and UK spy activities are not going to end any time soon. We have to remember that British and the American governments have created a faith war. It was created by Tony Blair and George Bush and so on. They are the ones who created the ISIS (ISIL). They are not necessarily the victims of ISIS, the victims of the ISIS are only people. But, they demand governments protect them (against the self-created war) and so it (mass surveillance) will not end soon”, Spring said.

‘Public outrage’

International human rights and privacy groups call the mass surveillance programs “breach of laws”.

Amnesty International’s latest legal move, however, coincides with the results of a large-scale poll the rights body conducted with some 15,000 people from 13 countries as well as the launch of its global anti-surveillance campaign.

The survey shows there is strong global opposition to internet and mobile phone interception with 71 percent of respondents saying they are strongly opposed to surveillance.

According to the poll, about 63 percent of respondents were also opposed to the US surveillance of UK internet and mobile phone use. The strongest opposition came from Brazil (80 percent) and Germany (81 percent).

Campaigners have urged Washington and London to make efforts in supervision and transparency around their programs. They say US President Barack Obama should “heed the voice of people around the world” and stop using the internet as a tool for collecting mass private data.

"Nobody disputes the necessity of properly-targeted surveillance, but the government must not ride roughshod over the rights of the very people they’re supposed to protect", Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary general said.

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