Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Two British lawmakers from opposing political parties united in a London court to challenge surveillance laws that allow security services to gather and retain the public’s private messages.

David Davis, a Conservative member of Parliament, and the Labour Party’s Tom Watson asked judges to review the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act Thursday amid doubts over its compliance with European human-rights law. The measures were approved by Parliament last July.

“The government’s decision to use emergency powers to enable it to spy on citizens shows the rights of the individual need to be strengthened to ensure the state can’t act with impunity,” Watson said in a statement.

The issue of how government agencies gather and hold onto Internet and phone data has been fiercely argued by courts and legislators around the world since documents leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed the extent of government spying.

Three U.S. spy programs aimed at stopping terrorists expired in the early hours of June 1 as Senate Republicans battled over legislation to renew them.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky argued against the intrusive powers which meant for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks intelligence and law enforcement agencies couldn’t monitor communications of suspected terrorists or seize records for counter-terrorism investigations.

President Barack Obama signed the Freedom Act June 2, overhauling NSA surveillance activities. The law bans the government from engaging in bulk data collection.

Crime

The two U.K. lawmakers “freely accept the importance” of using data in the “fight against crime and terrorism,” Dinah Rose, a lawyer representing them, said in court Thursday.

“Their concern is that this legislation doesn’t contain the necessary minimum safeguards to protect against the risk of arbitrary, disproportionate or abusive retention and use of personal data,” she said.

The current legislation requires phone operators to keep communications data for 12 months, and although the content of a phone conversation may not be known, the time, date, location and people involved would be simple to work out, Rose said.