High Court Marks DRIPA Law As Illegal

In recent years, technology and the law have been at heads about what is right and what is wrong. This ranges from is it legal to use drones for public use or even to deliver your amazon parcels, to the use of interception towers to track, record and locate people based on their mobile phones. Last year the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) was passed in the UK allowing the retention and access of information to groups with little or no legal outline. The High Court seems to agree with this and has marked the law as illegal following a challenge by two MP’s.

David Davis and Tom Watson (Conservative and Labour MP’s respectively) brought about the challenge following the DRIPA’s rush through parliament under the premise of being an “emergency” bill. The High Court has now stated that both sections 1 and 2 of DRIPA are fundamentally incompatible of the British public’s to private life and the protection of their digital data and data stored about them. These rights are provided under articles 7 and 8 of the EU’s charter of fundamental human rights.

The judgement was officially given on the 17th July, a year after it was officially brought into law after receiving Royal Assent. The reason for the ruling is the unclear way in which access to data would be provided for the purposes of protecting people only, such as detecting and preventing serious crimes, or that the access of information had no legal oversight such as through a court given permission and therefore, could be accessed without limitation.

With this ruling, the law must now be rewritten before March 2016, taking into account the need for legal intervention and outlining the ways in which the information can be obtained and used.

Thank you The Register for the information.

Image courtesy of newsday.