UK government spied on Amnesty International

HUMAN rights organisation Amnesty International have received official notification from the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) that they have been subject to mass surveillance by UK government agencies.
The news comes after Amnesty and nine other NGOs took legal action against agencies who they suspected of unlawfully spying on them.
Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Salil Shetty, points out that this revelation will compromise the work they do with victims of human rights abuses and human rights defenders, as confidentiality is an absolute necessity in gaining victims’ trust when revealing sensitive information.
“After 18 months of litigation and all the denials and subterfuge that entailed, we now have confirmation that we were in fact subjected to UK government mass surveillance. It’s outrageous that what has been often presented as being the domain of despotic rulers has been occurring on British soil, by the British government,” said Shetty.
The organisation has called for significant legal reform, including legislation to make judicial authorisation of surveillance necessary, and an independent inquiry into how and why the monitoring of human rights organisations took place.