Police could lawfully use bulk surveillance techniques to access messages from encrypted communications platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal, following a ruling by the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), a court has heard.

Police could lawfully use bulk surveillance techniques to access messages from encrypted communications platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal, following a ruling by the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), a court has heard.

  • @conciselyverboseEnglish
    2•1 month ago

    The court heard that the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 allows law enforcement to obtain a TEI warrant for a single investigation or operation, such as the covert monitoring of the activities of an identified organised crime group. However, the lawyers argued that a TEI warrant could not be used to monitor all users of a particular messaging service. It was not enough, they said, that the targets for surveillance were using a common technology “incidental to their suspected criminality”.

    I think this is their point. The additional links are walled, but the assertion it sounds to me like they’re making is that the ruling authorized them to hack and surveil an entire platform, rather than based on probable cause against specific individuals.