'Shocking...Outrageous': New Revelations Confirm UK Spied on Amnesty International

Tribunal which oversees British intelligence services admits that it mistakenly ruled that GCHQ had not targeted the human rights group for surveillance

by Nadia Prupis, staff writer

Underscoring "gross inadequacies" in the UK intelligence system, the group which oversees British spy services admitted on Wednesday that the government had targeted Amnesty International for surveillance and unlawfully misused its data—a startling turnaround of a ruling made just 10 days earlier, in which the tribunal declared that Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had not spied on the world's largest human rights organization.

On June 22, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that two international NGOs, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) and the Legal Resources Center in South Africa, had been subjected to illegal surveillance by the GCHQ.