Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Big Brother Watch and Others v. UK

  • Dr. Eliza Watt

Much Ado About Mass Surveillance – the ECtHR Grand Chamber ‘Opens the Gates of an Electronic “Big Brother” in Europe’ in Big Brother Watch v UK

June 28, 2021

By Dr Eliza Watt, researcher in cyber law, lecturer in law, Middlesex University, London, UK. On 25 May 2021 the Grand Chamber (GC) of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, the Court) handed down its much-anticipated decision in Big Brother Watch and Others v the UK (Big Brother Watch). The case is of vital […]

  • Guest Blogger

Regulating Signals intelligence

July 13, 2020

Iain Cameron is professor in public international law at Uppsala University Introduction For European states, an important factor pushing towards better regulation of security agencies generally has been the ECHR. The work of “signals intelligence” agencies (collecting metadata and the content of electronic mail and voice communications) came to prominence following the allegations of “mass […]

  • Guest Blogger

Big brother may continue watching you

October 12, 2018

By Judith Vermeulen (PhD Candidate, Law & Technology Research Group, Ghent University) On 13 September 2018, more than five years after Edward Snowden revealed the existence of electronic (mass) surveillance programmes run by the intelligence services of the United States of America and the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) found two […]