Privacy Concerns: Government Access to Personal Data in the UK


Latest in our reports on the human rights situation in the UK

September 2026

For some months we have been reporting on the progress of rights in the UK particularly as successive governments have passed more and more legislation to try and reduce their effect. Only in the past few days have we seen groups of people, dressed in black with balaclavas or face coverings, massing by the docks in Portsmouth and Dover yet no arrests were made. This contrasts with the hundreds of arrests made of people – without face masks or behaving in a threatening manner – who have been arrested on terrorist charges. They were promoting the cause of Palestinians which was embarrassing for the government in view, until this week, of its support for the Israeli government.

Family life

This right, protected by Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, helps safeguard our relationships and family connections. However the Immigration and Asylum Bill, passed in the Commons and now in the committee stage, seeks to narrow how people’s family life is recognised in immigration and asylum cases, wanting to limit it to a “core cohabiting family”. Other family relationships would have to demonstrate dependency beyond normal emotional ties. Factors such as financial dependence, emotional support, or concern for a relative living in a country affected by war would not individually be enough to establish dependency.

These changes could have serious consequences for people seeking asylum, migrants and their families including those already resident in the UK. They also raise a wider concern for all of us, since human rights protections are universal safeguards. They do not become conditional when issues are complex or politically contested.

Privacy

The government is reportedly again seeking access to highly encrypted personal data belonging to British users of Apple, having backed down last year in the face of political pressure from the US. Liberty and Privacy International are challenging the government’s power to use secretive ‘technical capability notices’ (TCNs) to unlock encrypted data of individuals.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has confirmed it will hear Liberty, Privacy International and two individuals’ challenge to the legality of the Home Secretary’s decision to use her powers to secretly force Apple to allegedly give the UK Government access to users’ secured data stored on iCloud. The challenge will also cover the legality of the Government issuing these types of notices at all.

Palantir

On the subject of privacy and the security of our information, there is growing concern at the inroads another American company. Palantir, is making into our political and social life. They have contracts with the NHS, the military and the police and the concerns are about how safe is the data they are collecting.

There will be an International Day of Action on October 1st and locally, will take place between 12:00 and 14:00 in Southampton at Frobisher House which is right by the station. Participants will include NHS workers and patients, in protest against the wide ranging contracts Palantir has succeeded in obtaining in the health services as well as the military. The resistance is planned across the Americas, Europe and Britain. The software company is connected to Trumps’s discredited ICE and to Israeli surveillance and aggression in Gaza and is considered an unsafe repository for UK citizens data and government information. (See June report.)

It is part of a general increase in concern about more and more American companies controlling nearly all aspects of our social life with almost no controls over their activities.

Privacy and racial bias

The tragic case of the Cambridge professor Jason Arday, whose suicide followed prolonged harassment by the press and fellow academics about his academic credentials, is being cited as evidence that black public figures are subject to greater scrutiny than their white peers. An enquiry is being called for.

As we have mentioned above, a convergence last weekend (3rd, 4th) of 400 far right anti-immigration protesters in balaclavas in Dover followed the next day by 200 in Portsmouth, who gridlocked roads, used violence against police officers and threats against volunteers of the RNLI who had just escorted a boat full of illegal immigrants. It has raised questions about police unpreparedness for organised protest, about the level of anti-immigrant violence but also about the wearing of face masks.

The controversial Crime and Policing Bill of 2026 criminalises the act of wearing or otherwise using an item (for instance a face covering) that conceals a person’s identity when in an area that the police have designated. “A ‘designation’ can only be made in relation to an area when the police reasonably believe that a protest may or is taking place in that area, the protest is likely to involve or has involved the commission of offences and that a designation would prevent or control the commission of offences.”

Charities such as Amnesty and Liberty have previously argued that the measure in the Crime and Policing Bill would prejudice those who need to mask for justifiable health, religious or political safety reasons while engaging in peaceful protest. Masking in order to conceal criminal identity is clearly a different motive but it is possible that these deliberately intimidating demonstrations may make it harder for police to apply discrimination in cases of peaceful and legitimate masked protesters.

Responding to the road block and disruption at the Port of Dover by the group ‘Patriot Platform‘, Kerry Moscogiuri, CEO at Amnesty International UK said:

“The images from the port of Dover today are truly shocking. We are seeing a sickening increase in racist violence, threats and intimidation targeting communities and stopping families going about their day to day lives. The overwhelming majority of us detest violence and racism, and we need to see political leaders show clear moral leadership, challenge racist narratives and stand firmly alongside those who are being targeted.”

Today (10th) a group of men assembled outside a hotel in Southampton (Cosham) having seen a coach arrive thinking (it is thought) they were asylum seekers. They were in fact members of the Pakistan cricket team. The tone of the reporting was that there was no problem and the police made no arrests. But it demonstrated that rumours spread by social media led to an assembly of mostly men at least one of whom entered the hotel. What if they had been asylum seekers … ? [Source: BBC]

Authoritarianism

Whether the recent and very welcome reset of the Labour government’s attitude to Israel’s illegal settlements will have any mitigating effect on the thousands of protesters awaiting trial on terrorism charges remains to be seen.

The determination of a terrorist connection has been made recently and solely in Palestine Action cases where for instance Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion protesters were simply charged with criminal damage. The Counter-Terrorism Act, extended in 2021, allows a judge alone to decide the nature of the sentence with no consideration by the jury during the trial. Even Rajiv Menon KC, the defence barrister of one of the Filton Four, was charged with contempt of court for reminding the jury that they had the right to acquit on conscience, making him the first defence attorney in Britain to be prosecuted over statements in a closing speech.

Amnesty’s Human Rights in the Collective (August Snapshot) looks at the inconsistency of charges of a ‘terrorism connection’ in several instances of protest where damage to property has occurred. It concludes that it is not hard to relate the UK government’s prosecution of Palestine Action (July 2025) to personal pressure from Trump on Starmer following the damage done by protesters spraying ‘Gaza is not for sale’ across his Scottish golf course (March 2025). The group is now designated as global terrorists by the US Government.

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