The Home Office operated an unlawful, secret, blanket policy to seize almost 2,000 mobile phones from asylum seekers arriving in the UK on small boats and then downloaded data from these phones, the high court has ruled.
The court found that the policy was unlawful on multiple fronts and breached the asylum seekers’ human rights. The judges ruled that there was no parliamentary authority for seizures and data extractions and that the legal power that Home Office officials thought they could use was the wrong one.
Three asylum seekers brought the case against the home secretary about the unpublished policy demanding the handover of the new arrivals’ phones between April and November 2020.
During the case the court heard evidence that asylum seekers were “bullied” into handing over their passcodes so that officials could unlock personal information including emails, photos and videos and download them to an intelligence database called Project Sunshine.
The Home Office defended its right to seize the mobile phones, saying that it helped officials gather evidence about the people smugglers who organise such journeys.
During the hearing, Sir James Eadie QC acknowledged that the Home Office had breached its duty of candour in relation to initially failing to admit that the unpublished policy to seize phones existed. He said it was “extremely unfortunate” and apologised.
The judges have ordered a separate hearing to decide what to do about this breach by the Home Office.
The Home Office conceded that the way the seizure policy was previously implemented was unlawful in some respects due to its blanket, unpublished nature.
Lawyers representing the three asylum seekers welcomed the ruling. Clare Jennings of Gold Jennings said: “Such systematic extraction of personal data from vulnerable asylum seekers, who were not suspects in any crime, was an astonishing and unparalleled assault on fundamental privacy rights.”
Daniel Carey of Deighton Pierce Glynn said: “Nearly 2,000 phones were taken from migrants in an indiscriminate blanket policy. All of this had real impacts on very vulnerable people, who lost touch with their families and couldn’t get their asylum documentation, while the phones languished on a shelf for many months.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Channel crossings are an overt abuse of our immigration laws but they also impact on the UK taxpayer, risk lives and our ability to help refugees who come to the UK via safe and legal routes.
“It is paramount that we continue to go after those facilitating dangerous crossings. We are considering the judgment and it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”
