“Mass wiretapping is illegal.” The European Court of Human Rights agrees with Snowden
In a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that mass wiretapping by the British spy agency GCHQ was illegal, proving whistleblower Edward Snowden to be right and pushing more demands for the former NSA contractor be pardoned.
The court noted that there were "fundamental shortcomings" in the interception of communications by the GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters, the British NSA), meaning that no politician or independent body had authorized the collection of the data, that the terms search tools used by GCHQ to navigate the data were not included in a warrant request and that individual names, email addresses and telephone numbers were illegally intercepted .
Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, who had to destroy hard drives given to him by Snowden in 2013 before the government seized them, commented positively on the ruling.
Snowden revealed that GCHQ was intercepting all online and telephone data in the UK via a program called 'Tempora'.
Snowden responded, saying he couldn't have done what he did without journalists and human rights lawyers:
Without journalists to tell the story, the public would not have known about it.
Without human right lawyers defending that public, the courts would not have cared about it.
Without those courts, politicians would still be denying it.
I could not have done this alone. https://t.co/TqqLzEj3Ht
– Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 25, 2021
The sentence led to new requests for acquittal or forgiveness for Snowden, still hidden in Moscow, as well as for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who languishes in prison.
BREAKING: UK mass surveillance found unlawful by Europe's highest human rights court.
This confirms definitively that the UK's bulk interception practices were unlawful for decades, a finding that vindicates @Snowden 's whistleblowing
OUR RESPONSE
– Big Brother Watch (@BigBrotherWatch) May 25, 2021
" This ruling confirms that UK mass espionage has violated citizens' rights to privacy and freedom of expression for decades ."
“ Today, Mr @Snowden's brave whistleblowing is vindicated as is the tireless work of the Big Brother Watch and our allies in this quest for justice. Mr Snowden clearly deserves the protection of democratic nations across Europe for his selfless defense of human rights. "
Because in order to claim one's own moral and democratic superiority it is necessary to exercise it, otherwise one is only a hypocrite.
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The article "Mass wiretapping is illegal". The European Court of Human Rights gives reason to Snowden comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/intercettazione-di-massa-e-illegale-la-corte-dei-diritti-delluomo-europea-da-ragione-a-snowden/ on Thu, 27 May 2021 20:20:19 +0000.