Judges Say the UK's Digital Surveillance Program Snooper's Charter Is Illegal (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson writes: Judges have ruled that the UK government's digital surveillance program -- known variously as the Snooper's Charter and the Investigatory Powers Act -- is illegal.

In the case brought by human rights group Liberty, appeal judges found that the preceding Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) -- which ultimately became the Snooper's Charter -- failed to offer adequate protection to people's data. Of particular concern was the fact that private data could be shared between different agencies without sufficient oversight. Further reading: The Intercept.

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Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately judges in the UK have aquired a taste for power in recent decades and have a habit of overturning laws that were passed by the democratically elected MPs in the commons.

Sorry, but if democratically elected MPs can't pass laws which pass legal muster, that's their goddamned fucking problem.

Being democratically elected is only part of the story. Writing laws which are legal is the other part.

For the same reason that any healthy democracy should have underpinnings which say "no, you don't get to decide these people are slaves", the judiciary is there to prevent people from passing laws which say exactly that.

If you live in a country where judges can't strike down laws as illegal, then you are in a seriously fucked country where lawmakers have absolute power and can pass any stupid ass law they want ... all MPs get to fuck your daughter and your wife whenever they wish, for instance.

So, hey, if you are stupid enough to think you want to live in a country where judges can't void laws ... then please, fuck off and go live in one. I guarantee you, it won't be a nice place.

Know who wants to live in a country where the judiciary can't strike down laws? Tyrants, fascists, and mewling idiots who are too stupid to understand the function of a judicial system in society.

If you want to live in such a country, move to one, and then shut the fuck up.

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Judges in the UK can't strike down statutes. The legal system here is not like the US, where the law can evolve directly through the courts as well as through legislation. Our courts are strictly there to interpret existing laws and to deal with conflicts.

In this case, the point is that two laws were incompatible. On the one hand, we have the surveillance law, introduced by our national government. On the other hand, we have the EU human rights laws. The court here took the view that the former were in conflict with the latter, and the latter won.

The same could potentially have happened in a post-Brexit world where those EU laws are no longer supreme, if the equivalent safeguards are transferred into our national law as part of the Brexit process. This is something that various MPs and campaign groups are promoting heavily right now, because they are sceptical about the government's preferred plan where ministers get to transfer laws but also make some adjustments to them, ostensibly for practical reasons, but without necessarily passing primary legislation in Parliament. The loss of EU-derived safeguards for human rights, employee protections and the like is the main reason for concern here.

Of course, assuming we do leave the EU and our national law is then all we have to work with, that does mean that the elected legislature can amend those laws however they want and judges then have to rule based on the new laws. This is by design, and is part of what's called parliamentary sovereignty -- the principle that Parliament is supreme among all parts of the government and can't be overruled by the government alone, activist judges or (more historically now) other potential influences such as royalty or aristocrats.

The potential downside of this is that, yes, they can make bad laws too. The upside is that if MPs do that, there will no longer be anywhere for them to hide. If they want to pass a law that says they can do something bad to ordinary people, they're going to have to do it in public through the mechanisms of Parliament and they're going to be accountable for it at the next general election.