Image: Wikimedia Commons/GCHQ
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"These widespread attacks on providers and collectives undermine the trust we all place on the internet."
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Cedric Knight of GreenNet said that “we could be unknowingly used to collect data on our users.”As for the motivation behind this challenge, Eric King, Deputy Director of Privacy International said, “These widespread attacks on providers and collectives undermine the trust we all place on the internet and greatly endangers the world’s most powerful tool for democracy and free expression. It completely cripples our confidence in the internet economy and threatens the rights of all those who use it. These unlawful activities, run jointly by GCHQ and the NSA, must come to an end immediately.” So it's not just about the legality of the actions, but also their consequences on the internet as a space for free speech.Whether this latest legal battle will bring about any tangible change in GCHQ's policies and actions remains to be seen. Being challenged by a group of relatively small companies is unlikely to make the agency or UK government quake in its boots, even if their actions are illegal.Riseup, the US email provider, seems to know this. “Ideally, of course, we'd like to get an order finding that this practice, like the similar practices of the NSA and other organizations, is an illegal usurpation of the fundamental right to communicate freely,” a representative told me. “Failing that, we hope to continue the critical discussion taking place around the world about the issue of widespread, state surveillance.”I reached out to BT, Britain's largest ISP, to ask if they had anything similar planned. They didn't get back to me by the time of publication.Even if it isn't necessarily going to halt GCHQ dead in its tracks, the challenge can't be completely shrugged off. The international spread of companies that have come together, and the fact that some of them are ISPs—the type of company that is absolutely fundamental to the type of mass surveillance programs that have been revealed—could set the precedent for future cases, and may encourage more organisations to take a stand against what they see as an attack on their services."Ideally, of course, we'd like to get an order finding that this practice … is an illegal usurpation of the fundamental right to communicate freely."