A UK government-appointed panel studied the issue of massive
surveillance, and recommended making ISPs keep records of all sorts of
things internet users do.
The report included one recommendation that the government does not
like: ministers would not be allowed to approve use of this data
personally. Rather, a special court would have to approve these.
I have not made a link to an article about this recommendation because
all the articles I have seen present this court as a tremendous step
forward, calling it the "balance" that makes total surveillance
acceptable.
I don't think so. The US FISA court has
hardly
checked surveillance at all, so why expect this one to do any
more?
Anyway, government ministers are very unhappy about the prospect of
losing this personal power. They want total surveillance and
personal control of it.
The UK government responded, through a cronyish newspaper, with a
story composed of leaks (!) by anonymous spook officials, claiming
that that Russia and China both got copies of Snowden's files and
decrypted them.
The article has several
claims
that are known to be false, and there is no reason to believe a
word of it.
More
information.
Liberty, roughly the UK equivalent of the US's ACLU, says that this is
the
standard deceptive practice of the surveillance state.