A written argument from an attorney representing British government officials and intelligence agencies says that “an attack in the UK is highly likely,” The Telegraph reports.
In another episode in the international tug-of-war between intelligence agencies looking to gather data in order to prevent terrorism and organizations looking to protect the basic privacy rights of individuals, the five-judge Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in London is adjudicating a suit filed by the charity “Privacy International” against Britain’s intelligence agencies, accusing them of the mass gathering of citizen’s private data, while no appropriate legal limitations have been put in place.
The suit is being fought by a plethora of official bodies, including the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary, and intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6.
James Eadie, representing the government bodies, told the tribunal in a written argument that the data collection has always been conducted in a legal manner in order to combat the “rising terror threat.”
Eadie states that the intelligence agencies have set the threat level as “SEVERE (sic), which means that an attack in the UK is highly likely.”
This has been made especially clear to the British government by the wave of recent terror attack throughout Europe, according to the written argument, with the main threat behind posed by militant Islamist extremists.
