Foreign Intelligence Gathering Laws from the Law Library of the Library of Congress.
From the webpage:
This report offers a review of laws regulating the collection of intelligence in the European Union (EU) and Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. This report updates a report on the same topic issued from 2014. Because issues of national security are under the jurisdiction of individual EU Member States and are regulated by domestic legislation, individual country surveys provide examples of how the European nations control activities of their intelligence agencies and what restrictions are imposed on information collection. All EU Member States follow EU legislation on personal data protection, which is a part of the common European Union responsibility.
If you are investigating or reporting on breaches of intelligence gathering laws in “the European Union (EU) and Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom,” this will be useful. Otherwise, for the other one hundred and eighty-eight (188), you are SOL.
Other than as a basis for outrage, it’s not clear how useful intelligence gathering laws are in fact. The secrecy of intelligence operations makes practical oversight impossible and if leaks are to be credited, no known intelligence agency obeys such laws other than accidentally.
Moreover, as the U.S. Senate report on torture demonstrates, even war criminals are protected from prosecution in the name of intelligence gathering.
I take my cue from the CIA‘s position, as captured by Bob Dylan in Tweeter and the Monkey Man:
“It was you to me who taught
In Jersey anything’s legal as long as you don’t get caught.”
Disarming yourself with law or ethics in any encounter with an intelligence agency, which honors neither, means you will lose.
Choose your strategies accordingly.