BRITISH spooks’ mass surveillance programmes have violated citizens’ right to privacy and operated without “any real safeguards,” the European Court of Human Rights ruled today.

In a landmark judgement, the court held by a majority that GCHQ’s mass interception of communications breached human rights due to a “lack of oversight of the entire selection process” that decided whose communications were intercepted.

The court also expressed concern that “the intelligence services can search and examine ‘related communications data’ apparently without restriction,” data identifying, among other things, senders and recipients of communications, their location, email headings, browsing information and IP addresses.