Three British organizations said Thursday that they had filed a legal challenge in the European Court of Human Rights to the online surveillance programs of the British spy agency the Government Communications Headquarters. The groups are seeking to have the court declare the collection of metadata, including e-mails and social media messages, in secret programs revealed by the American intelligence analyst Edward J. Snowden to be an illegal breach of the right to privacy.

The case, financed through donations, has been brought by English PEN, the Open Rights Group and Big Brother Watch, as well as by a German activist. The government said that a similar challenge could not be brought in domestic courts, but that a complaint could be made only to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which does not act in public.