Privacy watchdog launches 'Did GCHQ spy on you?' campaign to allow citizens to find out if they were under surveillance

Project comes after shock ruling by court that GCHQ spying was 'unlawful'

A new campaign by human rights watchdog Privacy International could allow millions of citizens in Britain and elsewhere to have data that was collected on them deleted.

The tribunal’s decision was announced on February 6, with campaigners saying at the time that the ruling could open up the possibility for mass deletion of information. It was the first time that the court ruled against the intelligence agencies since it was established in 2000.

It found that GCHQ collecting data from the NSA’s Prism and Upstream programmes was unlawful, because the rules governing the collection were kept secret.

According to documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, those programmes spied “by default”, meaning that millions of people could have had information taken by GCHQ.

“The public have a right to know if they were illegally spied on, and GCHQ must come clean on whose records they hold that they should never have had in the first place,” said Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International. “There are few chances that people have to directly challenge the seemingly unrestrained surveillance state, but individuals now have a historic opportunity finally hold GCHQ accountable for their unlawful actions."