In 2012, Big Brother Watch shut down its website in protest at the
Stop Online Piracy Act and
PROTECT IP Act proposed United States legislation, warning that similar plans may be proposed in the UK. Big Brother Watch was part of the anti-surveillance coalition Don't Spy On Us, which campaigned against the proposed bulk communications collection powers and lack of judicial safeguards in the
Investigatory Powers Bill, now
Investigatory Powers Act, in 2015 and 2016. In 2017, Big Brother Watch took a case against the United Kingdom, together with
Open Rights Group and
English PEN, to the
European Court of Human Rights arguing that British surveillance laws infringed British citizens'
right to privacy. (also known as
mugshots) and police use of
facial recognition technology. In 2018 they supported a debate in the
House of Lords which noted the intrusive nature of this technology, the lack of a legal basis or parliamentary scrutiny, and the possibility that it may be incompatible with
Article 8 right to privacy under the ECHR. In July 2018, the organisation brought a legal challenge against the
Metropolitan Police Service and the
Secretary of State for the Home Department. In 2019, Big Brother Watch has also campaigned to protect victims of crime from 'digital strip searches' of their mobile phones by police, especially victims of sexual violence. They campaigned alongside other rights and justice groups including
End Violence Against Women,
Rape Crisis England and Wales and the
Centre for Women's Justice. In 2019, Big Brother Watch investigated and succeeded in getting
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to delete over 5 million people's
voice biometrics, which had been collected without people's consent or knowledge, in breach of data protection laws, from a HMRC database. Big Brother Watch believed this to be the biggest ever deletion of biometric IDs from a British government database. The organisation has published reports investigating police access to people's personal mobile phone information, police use of body worn cameras, surveillance technology in schools and the use of outdated communications laws to prosecute internet speech. A 2011 BBW report into local authority data handling found that here had been more than 1000 incidents in which councils lost information about children and those in care. ==Board==