WIEDER AND GUARNIERI v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT (β) The applicants 81. The applicants argued that their communications and/or related communications data fell within the United Kingdom’s jurisdiction for the purposes of Article 1 of the Convention. In their opinion, where interception, storage, processing and interrogation of communications was carried out by the Contracting State on its own territory, it fell within its jurisdictional competence for two reasons. 82. First, where a Contracting State intercepted communications and/or related communications data within its own borders, the resulting interference with Convention rights was within that State’s jurisdiction, even if the victim was abroad at the moment of interference. For the applicants, this was consistent with the Court’s approach to jurisdiction in respect of other Convention rights, including Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (see, for example, Anheuser-Busch Inc. v. Portugal [GC], no. 73049/01, § 78, ECHR 2007-I; Bosphorus Hava Yolları Turizm ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi v. Ireland [GC], no. 45036/98, § 137, ECHR 2005-VI; Air Canada v. the United Kingdom, 5 May 1995, § 28, Series A no. 316-A; and AGOSI v. the United Kingdom, 24 October 1986, §§ 49 and 51, Series A no. 108), Article 6 (see, for example, Markovic and Others v. Italy [GC], no. 1398/03, §§ 54-55, ECHR 2006-XIV), Article 13 (see Nada v. Switzerland [GC], no. 10593/08, §§ 120-23, ECHR 2012) and Article 5 (see Stephens v. Malta (no. 1), no. 11956/07, §§ 51-54, 21 April 2009. They argued that the same approach should apply under Article 8 of the Convention; as with the interference with property, when “correspondence” was intercepted, opened, and read by a Contracting State, the interference took place within the jurisdiction of that State. Any other outcome would render Convention rights illusory in practice. 83. Secondly, the applicants contended that the activity fell within the scope of one of the recognised exceptions to territoriality. When a State carried on secret surveillance in its territory it exercised authority and control over the victim whose communications were intercepted. In the United Kingdom, surveillance was carried out with legal authority and the intelligence agencies assumed full control over intercepted communications. There was no principled basis for holding that “State agent authority and control” required physical control and power over individuals abroad. 84. Finally, the applicants submitted that the consequences would be absurd if they were not within the United Kingdom’s jurisdiction for the purposes of Article 1 of the Convention merely because they were not present within its territory at the moment when interception occurred. It would mean that Contracting States could conduct mass surveillance of everyone outside their territory, including their own citizens and citizens of all other Council of Europe Contracting States, and share intelligence obtained in respect of those individuals, without complying with any of the safeguards required by Article 8 of the Convention. It would also mean that if the communications of a person habitually resident in the United Kingdom were intercepted while 25