Britain censured over monitoring of Irish phone calls
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
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The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Britain breached international conventions by monitoring emails and phone calls from Ireland.
The data was intercepted over a seven-year period from 1990 to 1997.
Three human rights groups - the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, its British equivalent Liberty and British Irish Rights Watch - took the case when it was discovered a listening tower north of Chester in England was monitoring every single phone call between Britain and Ireland.
Britain refused to confirm or deny claims about the surveillance, but admitted the court could presume some of the three civil liberties groups' communications had been intercepted.
The ruling said the very existence of laws allowing secret monitoring of phone calls amounted to a surveillance threat and found there had been interference with their right of privacy which amounted to an abuse of power.
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