British security and intelligence agencies illegally collected vast amounts of data about UK citizens without proper oversight. The judgement of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the only court that hears complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, was made by Privacy International in June 2015. The IPTs ruling declared that the agencies collection of bulk communications data (BCD) the metadata, or who, when, where and how of telephone and internet use was unlawful from its commencement in March 1998 until November 2015.”]
Source: https://grahamcluley.com/gchq-broke-law-spying-citizens/