The Home Office has unlawfully allowed MI5 to gather vast amounts of the public’s data by wrongly approving bulk surveillance warrants, Britain’s most secret court heard today. The Human Right’s groups Liberty and Privacy International told the Investigatory Powers Tribunal that MI5 has provided false information to obtain warrants for bulk surveillance. The Home Office failed to investigate breaches by MI5, some of which date as far back as 2010, and as a result successive Home Secretaries continued to issue unlawful surveillance warrants, the court heard. Liberty lawyer Megan Goulding said that the case showed that the UKs surveillance laws are not fit for purpose and fail to offer adequate safeguards to protect the public from abuse.