Tag: surveillance

AI, Protest and Surveillance: Are UK Human Rights Under Threat?


Regulation of Artificial Intelligence

October 2026

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has called for a new AI Bill to address the scale and seriousness of threats posed to human rights by artificial intelligence systems.  Local MP, Sir Desmond Swayne is on the Committee. It points out that existing UK laws that could apply to AI do so primarily at the point of deployment, leaving the responsibility on its users rather than its designers. Regulators lack the power to test and evaluate AI systems before they are released, or to prevent their release if they are considered to pose unacceptable risks. Model developers engage with the AI Security Institute on a voluntary basis and it has no statutory power.

An illustration of a balance scale with books and documents on one side and a glowing, networked brain on the other, symbolizing the balance between knowledge and intellect.

In a fast moving world with technology moving at breakneck speed, the current legal framework that applies to AI is fragmented and difficult to navigate. It relies on harm-specific and sector-specific legislation leaving gaps in protection which fails to address preventable human rights risks. 

The right of an individual to seek effective remedy against decisions made against them is endangered by the use of AI. Insufficient transparency concerning how AI systems are used in decision making and a lack of effective mechanisms to challenge those decisions threatens the rights of people in the UK, particularly those of already minoritised communities, including Black and Minority Ethnic people. The right to privacy is also under serious threat.

To address the global nature of AI harms it argues governments need to collaborate to identify risks and promote consistent standards and that the UK should continue to play a leading role in international AI summits and seek to be party to international declarations and agreements on AI safety. (Source – Joint Committee [accessed 7 October])

Government approach to protest

Much concern has been expressed about successive government’s introducing legislation to try and limit protests. Climate campaigns and activities by Palestinian support organisations have come in for increasing controls and abundant arrests. Egged on by the right media with its talk of ‘zealots’ and ‘fanatics’, successive home secretaries have awarded the police more and more powers to clamp down on them. We have fundamental rights of assembly and of free speech which underpin protests.

Recent home secretaries have all been women who would not have been able to be MPs, let alone a home secretary, had it not been for the concerted and violent actions of the suffragettes. Many of the improvements to life we somewhat take for granted are the result of campaigns or protest movements.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights under Lord David Alton is launching an enquiry to look at the Government’s approach to protest:  “We want to understand if the expansion of police powers relating to protest has been proportionate or if they will have a chilling effect on the right to protest. We will also examine if the new laws are effective in protecting wider society from the potential negative consequences of disruptive protest.” 

Online privacy

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal is today considering how to take forward two legal challenges concerning the Government’s reported attempt to weaken end-to-end encryption for Apple users. One challenge has been brought by Apple. The other has been brought by Liberty, Privacy International and two individuals. End-to-end encryption is an essential security tool. It protects our bank details, health information, private conversations and photos, ensuring that only the sender and recipient can access the data being shared.
 

Surveillance

Between February and July this year, the British Transport Police ran a six-month live facial recognition trial across some of London’s busiest transport hubs – without making a single arrest.

The aim of the scheme was to catch offenders and people breaching court orders. More than half a million faces were scanned. The trial cost more than £320,000 and took up almost 100 hours of police time. This resulted in one alert which turned out to be incorrect. Despite this, the British Transport Police announced last month that it will be extending the trial for another four months and expanding it into London Underground stations.

Facial recognition is an essential tool used by repressive regimes such as China to control their citizens.

These two technologies, combined with a series of home secretaries keen to limit freedoms and giving police more and more powers, are a serious threat to our rights. We need to be aware of this.

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Illegal police surveillance of journalists


Tribunal finds that police illegally spied on journalists

December 2024

Viewers of news programmes last evening (17 December) will have noticed journalists and David Davies MP standing outside the Royal Courts of Justice holding Amnesty signs saying ‘Journalism is not a Crime’. This was as a result of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruling that both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Metropolitan Police had acted unlawfully by spying on journalists during the Troubles*.

Journalism is an important part of our society and is sometimes the only means we have of getting some glimpse of the truth. Police actions in spying on journalists is to be deprecated. Two journalists, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey produced a film called No Stone Unturned which documented the alleged collusion between the Police and the suspected murderers in the massacre which took place in Loughinisland in 1994. Six Catholic men were shot dead in the UVF attack, which was later found to involve collusion. In making enquiries to the PSNI this set off the surveillance operation in a bid to find the sources the journalists had relied on. It seemed relatively easy for the police at the time to acquire these orders.

‘Landmark case for press freedom‘ – Amnesty

Responding to a judgment from the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) which today ruled that the police acted unlawfully and breached the human rights of Northern Ireland journalists, Amnesty declared it a ‘landmark case for press freedom’.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is the only British court with statutory powers to investigate secret police surveillance, ruled that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Metropolitan Police Service unlawfully spied on the journalists in a bid to uncover their sources.

At the conclusion of a five-year investigation, the Tribunal found that the PSNI had repeatedly acted unlawfully, in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. The unlawful behaviour reached all the way to the top of the PSNI with the then Chief Constable Sir George Hamilton being found by the Tribunal to have acted unlawfully by failing to “consider whether there was an overriding public interest justifying an interference with the integrity of a journalistic source” when he authorised a spying operation against an official at the Office of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland.

There are increasing concerns about police and security service surveillance, which is becoming easier with new technology. Software can be placed on phones to intercept messages, whether the phone is switched on or not.

Sources: Amnesty International; Irish Times; Irish News; The Guardian

*The ‘Troubles’ were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe. (Wikipedia)

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Huge spy leak uncovered


Israeli company involved in supplying spyware to some of the world’s worst regimes

July 2021

The Israeli company NSO has been involved in selling spyware to a variety of regimes including Hungary, India, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and UAE. The Spyware, called Pegasus, enables the governments and their agents to penetrate mobile phones and listen to messages, download call lists and turn the device into a microphone. Amnesty International has been a key player in uncovering the scandal.

The technology is used to intercept all manner of individuals who are critical of the regime or who are engaged in uncovering corruption. Lawyers, human rights defenders, opposition leaders and journalists are all able to be targeted by the technology. The victims will be unaware that their phones and all their personal details and contacts have been penetrated. The Israeli firm claims it ‘does not operates the systems that it sells to vetted government customers’. NSO has said the claims are false.

The evidence of Amnesty’s Security Lab is extensive and on many of the phones it has forensically examined, it found evidence of Pegasus activity. Even the editor of the Financial Times was found on a list of phone numbers leaked to Forbidden Stories who are leading the investigation.

There is extensive coverage in the Guardian in the UK and in other newspapers around the world. Clearly the story has not ended yet and there will be more revelations to come. There will also be reactions when the extent of penetration, the use the information has been put to to stifle debate and silence opposition is uncovered. Whether the Israeli government is more involved than it claims remains to be seen.

Followers of this blog will be familiar with this activity and the technology used to penetrate phones and iPhones. We published a blog concerning a firm near Salisbury which makes and sells equipment similar to NSO, concerning the firm Gamma TSE at Porton. There is no suggestion they are associated with the NSO organisation.

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Spyware outrage


Observer publishes article about use of spyware

March 2019

Today’s (17 March 2019) UK Observer newspaper published a story about the use of spyware around the world and in particular by countries known for their poor human rights record.  These include Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Readers of this blog will know that this has been going on for some time and a report by the University of Toronto’s Citizen’s Lab has been compiling evidence of this activity and publishes reports of the use of spyware around the world.  Other organisations like Privacy International are also concerned.

What the Observer article reveals is the scale of the UK’s exports which have amounted to £75m since 2015.  Human Rights groups are concerned at this trade since it enables authoritarian governments to penetrate the devices of anyone it doesn’t like and gather information at will from their equipment.   The equipment is capable of intercepting email, instant messaging and VoIP communications, as well as spying on users through webcams and microphones and transmitting the data to a command-and-control server.

In addition to the scale of trade, is the issue of secrecy and attempts to get details of what and who is being supplied from Department of International Trade using FOI are largely fruitless.  The concern is that what matters is trade and not the purposes to which the equipment is put.

Part of the units occupied by Gamma in Porton

Porton Business Centre

This is of interest in the Salisbury area because one of the firms which manufactures this equipment called Finspy is a firm called GammaTSE based in the village of Porton not far from the city (and not far from Porton Down, the chemical weapons centre – the same Porton).  A report by the University of Toronto in 2013 found Finspy installed in 36 countries.  The firm’s website coyly describes its service thus;

GammaTSE has been supplying government agencies worldwide with turnkey surveillance projects since the 1990s.  GammaTSE manufactures highly specialized surveillance vehicles and integrated surveillance systems, helping government agencies collect data and communicate it to key decision-makers for timely decisions to be made.

An earlier post described the firm’s activities in more detail.  The UK is therefore heavily involved in a trade which allows governments to intercept messages of human rights activists, opposition members, journalists and more or less anyone it does not like.

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Government loses surveillance case


European Court rules against UK government in a landmark case

October 2018

In September 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK government’s surveillance activities acted against the human rights of its citizens.  It said the ‘UK mass surveillance programme violated human rights and had no real safeguards in place’.  British intelligence agencies – principally GCHQ – violated the right to a private and family life because there was insufficient oversight over which communications were chosen for examination.

As the Independent newspaper puts it:

Under the guise of counter terrorism the UK had adopted the most authoritarian surveillance regime in Europe corroding democracy itself and the rights of the British public.  13 September

A number of human rights organisations, including Amnesty and Liberty, have been pursuing this case and the result is to be welcomed.  Amnesty were particularly concerned because they themselves were penetrated by GCHQ.  In view of the sensitivity of Amnesty’s work and the contacts with vulnerable people around the world, to find that a government agency was calmly monitoring its work is alarming.  The wholesale nature of the Tempora programme was a shock to many.

What is also alarming is the lack of oversight of the agencies.  Despite, as the New Statesman puts it, an ‘alphabet soup’ of organisations which are meant to be overseeing and monitoring what they are up to, it was the work of journalists and human rights organisations which finally brought the government to account.

For many people this is a matter of little interest.  People often say they are unconcerned if their emails are being monitored and their movements tracked.  ‘If I have done nothing wrong, so what?’ is a common response.  Likewise, the discovery that people were being manipulated using Facebook over the Brexit vote has evoked little real interest.

For those who have lived in an authoritarian state on the other hand, and have experienced first hand what it’s like to be subject to constant and intrusive surveillance, the reaction is likely to be different.

When Britain leaves the EU, the current government was determined to remove us from the aegis of the court and to abolish the Human Rights Act.  This was a manifesto promise.  That position has shifted during the Brexit negotiations and we will continue to be subject to its jurisdiction.  This has infuriated that section of the Conservative party who do not wish to be controlled by ‘foreign courts’ as they put it.

This ruling emphasises how important it is that we stay within the ECHR.  Clearly, parliament, MPs and various oversight agencies failed in their basic duty of oversight.  There is a legitimate desire to detect terrorists and those who wish to do harm to the country or individuals within it.  This is written in Salisbury where the attempted murder of two Russians by agents of the GRU is a case in point.  We rely on the various state agencies to keep watch over individuals with malign intent.  But is has to be targeted and subject to oversight.  We give up a bit of our liberty and freedom because we want to be safe.  It does not mean giving a free hand to collect any information that GCHQ feels it needs in a kind of fishing expedition.  We also rely on parliament to keep and eye on the executive and its agencies to see that they are properly monitored and behaving responsibly.  They fail in that.

This ruling is welcomed and we now need to hear from government what measures they are going to adopt to put matters right.  We also rely on the opposition to ask questions of the government and to keep their feet to the fire.

Sources: the Independent; the New Statesman; the Guardian; Amnesty International 

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