MI5 may have illegally held large volumes of private data without adequate protection, according to documents released in the High Court during a case being brought against the Home Office by civil liberties organisation Liberty. MI5's internal documents revealed failures to comply with standards surrounding the storage of personal data and that the security agency failed to act on the breaches despite being aware of them for several years. The documents, which were obtained under Freedom of Information laws, show how senior officers at GCHQ had been storing vast amounts of information about British citizens who visited websites such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube –
MI5 may have illegally held large volumes of private data without adequate protection, according to documents released in the High Court during a case being brought against the Home Office by civil liberties organisation Liberty. MI5's internal documents revealed failures to comply with standards surrounding the storage of personal data and that the security agency failed to act on the breaches despite being aware of them for several years. A letter from an MI5 director in March revealed that the agency was aware of data being held in "ungoverned spaces" in 2016 but that resolving the issue had proved too large a task.