We are outraged to learn that the UK’s Gov­ern­ment Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Head­quar­ters (GCHQ), the British spy agency, has spied on email communications of the Legal Resources Centre. This emerged on Monday in a ruling by the UK’s secretive Investigative Powers Tribunal. The ruling confirmed that another human rights organisation, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), was also spied on in breach of GCHQ’s internal policies.

It seems there are no limits to what GCHQ and its allies are willing to do. The ruling found that this surveillance was illegal, even by GCHQ’s own very lax standards, although this was described as a “technical” breach.

This is further evidence of the extent to which governments across the world seem willing to use surveillance policies to invade the privacy of human rights defenders and ordinary citizens alike.

The LRC provides pro bono legal support to many civil society groups and communities across South Africa, including the Right2Know Campaign. This surveillance has potentially also violated the rights of the LRC’s clients to attorney-client confidentiality, although no information has been provided in the ruling about precisely what communications were intercepted. We applaud the LRC for its continued efforts to protect the rights of its clients.

We call on the British Embassy in Pretoria to explain how its government came to spy on South African human rights lawyers!

And we send a message to the GCHQ, which they can plug into Google Translate in their own time:

Sidikiwe! Voetsek!

For more information see the LRC’s press release and Privacy International’s briefing.