Taking liberties: How to be a terror suspect in a day

IN Liberty v The United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights last week held that a system of mass surveillance operated by the British government to spy on all telephone calls, faxes and emails to and from Ireland was in breach of the right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case, brought jointly by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Liberty and British-Irish Rights Watch, dealt with a system operated by the Ministry of Defence. Between 1990 and 1997, it monitored up to 10,000 simultaneous telephone channels coming from Dublin to London and on to the continent.

But Ireland’s own surveillance system is no less pervasive and, with its limited safeguards, could also be in breach of the convention, according to the ICCL.