The information came to light during the investigations into their surveillance habits

Jul 19, 2014 18:57 GMT  ·  By

Since the intelligence services of the world keep collecting and storing all these emails that innocent people send around the world, they may as well put them up in databases, right?

At least that’s what a tribunal investigating mass surveillance on the Internet has been told, The Guardian reports.

If the privacy violation wasn’t enough, knowing that the intelligence agencies keep our private conversations in extensive databases to better look through them at a later time adds insult to injury.

The newspaper reports that the claim surfaced during the case against the surveillance activities of GCHQ, MI5, MI6 and the government. Several human rights groups told those present at the hearing that “databases gathering material that may be useful for the future is something that may be permissible under Ripa (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000).”

Basically, if they considered it necessary to create such a database, their use can “stretch far into the future.”

While the government’s lawyers didn’t outright confirm the suspicions, they did concede that such a thing would be possible under Ripa. The primary target of these data collections seem to be persistent security threats, although there’s been no explanation as to who would fall into this category.

After all, the intelligence services have been known to add people to their target lists just for searching WikiLeaks, the TOR project or encryption services.

Human rights groups have argued that developing such a tool was rejected by parliament when the communications data bill, also known as the snooper’s chart, was defeated last year.

“There must be accessible guidelines in relation to how both the content and communications data are treated… the Government is setting up vast databases of all our communications that have been collected,” said Matthew Ryder QC, a barrister at Matrix Chambers in London who specializes in complex crime and its interplay with civil law.

Privacy International’s Ben Jaffey says that Ripa has stopped providing the necessary safeguards against the interception of communications without an individual warrant because a statute introduced in 2000 no longer offers the same protection nowadays.

Basically, the law has stayed the same, but as more Internet traffic was routed through foreign websites and online servers, Ripa lost its force.

The British intelligence agencies have been under scrutiny in the past week following the revelations based on Snowden’s leaked files. While these agencies are being investigated for going beyond what law permits, the government is trying to rapidly push a bill that would allow it to order any telecommunications company to collect and store people’s data, including the numbers someone dials, their texts and even a list of accessed sites.