The failure of the latest legal challenge to the UK government’s snooping powers will be bitterly disappointing for privacy campaigners who, buoyed by shock revelations of long-standing unlawful behaviour by MI5, were hopeful the ruling would be in their favour.
More importantly, it sends a clear message to both the government and those whose data it harvests.
It reassures the Home Office that it can act with impunity when handling the vast volumes of bulk surveillance data it “hoovers up” every day, while bringing into sharp focus for the public that there can be no guarantee of safety for our data once in government hands.
