The U.K.’s “expansive spying regime” appears to operate...

two fronts, PI said: (1) Failure to have a publicly accessible legal framework in which communications data of those located in the U.K. are accessed after being obtained and passed on by the National Security Agency through Prism. (2) The “indiscriminate interception” and storing of huge amounts of data by tapping undersea fiber cables through the Tempora program. It’s reported that the U.K. has had access to Prism since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from the system in 2012, PI said. Without a legal framework that lets citizens know the circumstances in which such spying takes place, the government “effectively runs a secret surveillance regime, making it nearly impossible to hold them accountable for any potential abuses,” it said. That appears to breach the European Convention on Human Rights, which safeguards the rights to privacy, personal communications and freedom of expression, it said. PI intended to file the Prism case in the Administrative Court, which would have made it public, but after government objections, filed in the tribunal, whose proceedings aren’t public, the organization said. The Government Communications Headquarters, which is taking the lead on the case, said it doesn’t comment on intelligence matters.