WIEDER AND GUARNIERI v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
a matter of personal autonomy. Interferences with, and effects upon, his
private life were therefore not abstract concepts which could be separated
from the individual, but rather events which happened to the individual. That
was so even if the originating cause of the impact or interference took place
in a different State. The interference happened to the individual, and thus took
place where the individual was located. The applicants’ reliance on case-law
concerning Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, and Articles 6, 13 and 5 of the
Convention (see paragraph 82 below) was misplaced; either the issue of
jurisdiction did not arise in those cases, or they were distinguishable on their
facts. Having particular regard to the case-law under Article 1 of
Protocol No. 1, the Government argued that privacy, private information and
freedom of expression were not property and could not therefore amount to a
“possession” for the purposes of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. Similarly, there
was no analogy with the Article 6 case-law as the applicants in those cases
had chosen to bring proceedings in the respondent State, and therefore
voluntarily submitted to those States’ jurisdiction.
78. Moreover, neither applicant fell within the “espace juridique”
exception, as that did not apply to the facts of the case.
79. For the Government, there was nothing absurd about individuals
outside the United Kingdom falling outside that State’s territorial jurisdiction.
On the contrary, it was simply a natural consequence of the territorial nature
of jurisdiction. The very fact that the Convention was not universal meant
that jurisdictional lines had to be drawn, and some individuals would fall
outside those lines. Such an outcome would not lead to the inevitable
conclusion that controls over extraterritorial acts were lacking. In the United
Kingdom, for example, surveillance was subject to judicial scrutiny and
oversight by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and the IPT regardless
of whether surveillance was directed at individuals within or outside the
United Kingdom. Individuals outside the United Kingdom were able to
complain to the IPT about breaches of the statutory framework, just as these
applicants did, and the IPT could in substance address exactly the same issues
under domestic law as might have arisen under the Convention.
80. Finally, before the IPT the applicants had argued that the impugned
acts had occurred in the territory of the United Kingdom, and, in respect of
the exceptions to the territoriality principle, that Mr Guarnieri was within the
“espace juridique” of the Convention. Insofar as they now sought to argue
that the respondent State had exercised control over them by intercepting,
accessing, extracting, filtering, storing, analysing and disseminating their
communications, the Government contended that this argument was in truth
an attempt to rerun the argument unsuccessfully made in Banković and
Others (cited above, § 75), namely, that anyone adversely affected by an act
imputable to a Contracting State was brought within the jurisdiction of that
State for the purposes of Article 1 of the Convention.
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