Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

But Inkster claims there was an implicit argument by newspapers publishing the Snowden revelations that the data was "so promiscuously distributed" that the NSA deserved to have its secrets exposed. That argument is self-serving and does not stand up to close analysis, says Inkster.

In response to a question in September about the impact of Snowden's disclosures, Inkster said he sensed that "those most interested in the activities of the NSA and GCHQ have not been told very much they didn't know already or could have inferred".

Inkster says in his Survival article that it is likely that some members of the British cabinet were not made privy to the details to GCHQ's "collection programes", because "they would not need this knowledge to perform their functions". Those cabinet members who did need to know "would have been appropriately briefed", he says.

Er, you'd certainly have to stretch the ECHR's Article 8 to apply it to Merkel