WIEDER AND GUARNIERI v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT extraterritorial exercise of its jurisdiction, the suggested bases of such jurisdiction (including nationality and flag) are, as a general rule, defined and limited by the sovereign territorial rights of the other relevant States. The Court has recognised that, as an exception to the principle of territoriality, acts of the States Parties performed, or producing effects, outside their territories can constitute an exercise of jurisdiction within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention. In each case, with reference to the specific facts, the Court has assessed whether the existence of special features justifies the finding that the State concerned was exercising jurisdiction extraterritorially (see M.N. and Others v. Belgium [(dec.) [GC], no. 3599/18, §§ 98-99 and 101-02, 5 May 2020], and the references therein, and Georgia v. Russia (II) [[GC], no. 38263/08, § 82, 21 January 2021]).” (β) Application of the general principles to the facts of the present case 88. To date, the Court has not had the opportunity to consider the question of jurisdiction in the context of a complaint concerning an interference with an applicant’s electronic communications. In Bosak and Others v. Croatia (nos. 40429/14 and 3 others, 6 June 2019) the Court did not consider whether the interception of the communications of the two applicants who were living in the Netherlands fell within Croatia’s jurisdiction for the purposes of Article 1 of the Convention, perhaps because those applicants’ telephone conversations were intercepted and recorded by the Croatian authorities on the basis of secret surveillance orders lawfully issued against another applicant, who lived in Croatia and with whom they had been in contact. While the question of jurisdiction was alluded to in Weber and Saravia v. Germany (dec.), no. 54934/00, § 72, ECHR 2006-XI and in Big Brother Watch and Others (cited above, § 272), in neither case was it necessary to decide the issue. 89. The applicants in the present case have not suggested that they were themselves at any relevant time in the United Kingdom or in an area over which the United Kingdom exercised effective control. Rather, they contend either that the acts complained of – being the interception, extraction, filtering, storage, analysis and dissemination of their communications by the United Kingdom intelligence agencies pursuant to the section 8(4) regime (see paragraph 56 above) – nevertheless fell within the respondent Government’s territorial jurisdiction, or, in the alternative, that one of the exceptions to the principle of territoriality applied. 90. In Big Brother Watch and Others the Court identified four stages to the bulk interception process: the interception and initial retention of communications and related communications data; the searching of the retained communications and related communications data through the application of specific selectors; the examination of selected communications/related communications data by analysts; and the subsequent retention of data and use of the “final product”, including the sharing of data with third parties (ibid, § 325). Although it did not consider that the interception and initial retention constituted a particularly significant interference, in its view the degree of interference with individuals’ Article 8 27