ABSTRACT
Former US NSA employee Edward Snowden’s passing onto media sources classified documents relating to the practices of the NSA and the UK’s GCHQ, in particular the PRISM project, resulted in condemnation of wide surveillance practices carried out by counterterrorism agencies. Underpinning this concern was how respective states’ anti-terror legislation widened those agencies’ powers to an extent it is effectively suffocating individuals’ liberty and widens the scope of criminalization. This chapter examines the legislation governing surveillance related to terrorism in the United States and the United Kingdom along with an analysis of the judicial scrutiny of state agencies’ practices in cases related to the legislation both pre and post the Snowden revelations. This leads to an explanation of why agencies like the NSA and GCHQ require wide surveillance powers and the impact the revelation of stolen classified documents such as those passed on by Snowden to UK’s The Guardian newspaper can have on national security.
