> The court said it had identified three “fundamental deficiencies” in the regime. They were that
> bulk interception had been authorised by the secretary of state, and not by a body independent of the executive;
> that categories of search terms defining the kinds of communications that would become liable for examination had not been included in the application for a warrant;
> and that search terms linked to an individual (that is to say specific identifiers such as an email address) had not been subject to prior internal authorisation.
Out of _everything_ that Snowden revealed -- the fact that _effectively everything_ transmitted electronically from one human being to another on this planet ended up in the hands of five-eyes; including how the US and UK used each others' rules to snoop on each others' citizens without oversight -- how is it the case that the court only finds that the problems are:
(1) the wrong civil servant authorised the snooping;
(2) the paperwork did not specify that the types of electronic communication examined would be e.g. "email" (which is a valid search term!);
and (3) finally, the one with teeth, the fact that investigators should have _some vague idea about what they are looking for_ before they start searching.
I don't know about you, but I'm not reassured by this ruling. This isn't an issue for the political parties in any nation, as far as I can tell, and I don't quite understand why. We have a right to privacy -- let's use it! At the very least, I wish more people would use GPG. (And yes, Mac GPG mail is actually pretty good and usable. I just have nobody listening on the other side).