Back in December, we wrote about a case brought before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) against the UK government over the spying carried out by GCHQ. We were worried that such a secretive but toothless oversight body would either simply throw out the case on some technicality, or issue a weak and useless judgment. But something remarkable has happened: as part of the official response, Charles Farr, the UK‘s Director General of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism, has made a 50-page statement that reveals a wealth of information about the UK‘s surveillance activities for the first time (pdf).