432 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 4 / 2014 manner”.11 In its recommendations it calls on the EU Member States to prohibit blanket mass surveillance activities and to ensure that their national legislation and practices governing the activities of the intelligence services are in line with the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights and EU data protection legislation.12 The Big Brother Watch and Others v. the United Kingdom13 was the first lawsuit brought before the European Court of Human Rights triggered by the information leaked by Edward Snowden, on use by the United States and the United Kingdom of technologies that enable the indiscriminate collection of vast amounts of communication data and the exchange of this data between the two States.14 The applicants alleged that they are likely to have been the subject of generic surveillance by GCHQ and/or that the United Kingdom security services may have been in receipt of foreign intercept material relating to their electronic communications, such as to give rise to interferences with their rights under Article 8 of the ECHR.15 11 A7-0139/2014. (Main finding 1) It points specifically to US NSA intelligence programmes allowing for the mass surveillance of EU citizens through direct access to the central servers of leading US internet companies (PRISM programme), the analysis of content and metadata (Xkeyscore programme), the circumvention of online encryption (BULLRUN), access to computer and telephone networks, and access to location data, as well as to systems of the UK intelligence agency GCHQ such as the upstream surveillance activity (Tempora programme), the decryption programme (Edgehill), the targeted ‘man-in-the-middle attacks’ on information systems (Quantumtheory and Foxacid programmes) and the collection and retention of 200 million text messages per day (Dishfire programme). Ibid. Finding 2. 12 Ibid. Findings 22, 23 and 27. 13 Application no. 58170/13 filed on 4 September 2013 and communicated to the UK government on 9 January 2014. The applicants are the British NGOs Big Brother Watch, English Pen and Open Rights Group, together with the German activist Dr. Constanze Kurz. 14 It specifically refers to the PRISM and TEMPORA programmes. 15 In the applicants’ submission, there is no basis in domestic law for the receipt of information from foreign intelligence agencies. In addition, there is an absence of legislative control and safeguards in relation to the circumstances in which the United Kingdom intelligence services can request foreign intelligence agencies to intercept communications and/or to give the United Kingdom access to stored data that has been obtained by interception, and the extent to which the United Kingdom intelligence services can use, analyse, disseminate and store data solicited and/or received from foreign intelligence agencies and the process by which such data must be destroyed. In relation to the interception of communications directly by GCHQ, the applicants submit that the statutory regime applying to external communications warrants does not comply with the minimum standards outlined by the Court in its case law. The applicants further contend that the generic interception of external communications by GCHQ, merely on the basis that such communications have been transmitted by transatlantic fibre-optic cables, is an inherently disproportionate interference with the private lives of thousands, perhaps millions, of people, Fourth Section, Application no. 58170/13, Big Brother Watch and Others against the United Kingdom lodged on 4 September 2013. Statement of facts, (available at
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