According to a new ruling handed down today by a secret UK court, GCHQ—essentially the UK equivalent of the NSA—unlawfully spied on British citizens. The ruling pertains to the intelligence sharing between the USA and UK, where GCHQ had access to the NSA’s PRISM and UPSTREAM programs. Basically, because the rules that governed the UK’s access to PRISM and UPSTREAM were kept secret, GCHQ contravened two Articles of the European Convention of Human Rights—the right to freedom of expression and information, and the right to private and family life.

Details are found in an article by – Feb 6 2015, 9:19am EST in the ArsTechnica web site at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/gchq-unlawfully-spied-on-uk-citizens-rules-secret-court/.