EU's Highest Court Delivers Blow To UK Snooper's Charter (theguardian.com)

"General and indiscriminate retention" of emails and electronic communications by governments is illegal, the EU's highest court has ruled, in a judgment that could trigger challenges against the UK's new Investigatory Powers Act -- the so-called snooper's charter. From a report on The Guardian: Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime -- including terrorism -- is justified, according to a long-awaited decision by the European court of justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg. The finding came in response to a legal challenge initially brought by the Brexit secretary, David Davis, when he was a backbench MP, and Tom Watson, Labour's deputy leader, over the legality of GCHQ's bulk interception of call records and online messages. Davis and Watson, who were supported by Liberty, the Law Society, the Open Rights Group and Privacy International, had already won a high court victory on the issue, but the government appealed and the case was referred by appeal judges to the ECJ. The case will now return to the court of appeal to be resolved in terms of UK legislation.

Comments

Re:Why would that matter?

[Maritz]

The UK will not leave the EU until 2 years after Article 50 is triggered. At the moment, they're saying next March. So the UK will remain part of the EU until at least March 2019.

Another judgement to be ignored

[bagofbeans]

EU also ruled that UK police have to delete it's DNA database of innocent people, but that hasn't happened yet hazzit?

Re:Cannot compute...

[serviscope_minor]

You lack reading comprehension as well as any comprehension about what trade deals and treaties mean.

So basically your argument is that they can't do anything about it really

My argument is they can do precisely as much or as little about it as any party we sign a trade deal with in future.

So all your arguments about how the EU is bad because they have a say over our laws and because they have the final say and can overrule us will apply exactly the same to any trade deals we sign.

So unless you're proposing we sign no trade deals in future, then your posistion is inconsistent and irrational.

Amazingly the UK traded successfully with Europe for hundreds of years before the EU existed.

Yes, and look how that ended, not with a whimper but with a bang.