The UK s surveillance agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), was censured Friday for its lack of transparency over its use of information received by the U.S. s National Security Agency, reports the .
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a UK court that oversees intelligence and security agencies, reversed an earlier ruling that the GCHQ had not contravened human rights law.
Now, the UK court says the GCHQ violated the European Human Rights Act when it shared information with the U.S. between 2007 and 2014.
In December, the agency made public its safeguards for information sharing and the mass surveillance programs, thus making the exchanges lawful. Now the agency is compliant with human rights laws, the court said.
A GCHQ spokesperson said that the ruling focused one small respect in relation to the historic intelligence-sharing regime and that the agency was not required to change its operations, the Washington Post reported.
The ruling comes as the British Prime Minister David Cameron seeks to beef up surveillance powers, the Post wrote.
Above: Illustration from MCT