The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that the bulk interception regime conducted by the UK government is in breach of Human rights legislation: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-violated-human-rights-strasbourg-court-rules This ruling has taken 5 years to reach fruition; the UK government claim that the Investigatory Powers Bill (2016) - which the court did not consider - has created "robust independent oversight" of how the powers are used. The court did not find the international sharing of the data illegal.
The ECHR seems decent on privacy issues. That's quite the back-and-forth they've had with the UK (and EU generally). I wonder how things will go after the UK is fully gone from the EU.
The UK say it will continue with GDPR, and there seems little prospect now that the Human Rights Act (that the UK was instrumental in getting agreed!) will be overturned either - the court that assesses it may change of course, but I think you might be surprised that they are still independent. The judgement does have its weaknesses and inconsistencies though, it's not a victory as such, just a statement of the obvious. As usual, it takes way too long to get justice and the UK government fights every step of the way to defend the indefensible.
