Digital Rights Ireland

Labour Party Concerns About Data Retention

It’s been some time coming, but we’re glad to see the Labour Party shares our concern about data retention:

The Labour Party Spokesperson on Justice, Deputy Brendan Howlin TD, has called for a review of the operation of powers given to the Gardai under the 2005 Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act to access personal telephone records, following information given to the Sunday Times by the Data Protection Commissioner that 10,000 such requests had been made by the Garda authorities during 2006.

This measure was added on as a last minute amendment to the Bill by the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, when it was going through the Dail in 2005 and was never properly debated by the House. While there was acceptance that such a power might be necessary to fight international terrorism or organised crime, I do not believe that any member of the Oireachtas envisaged that the power would be used so often. This amounts to almost 30 requests for every single day in 2006.

Given the extensive use by the Gardai of what should be an exceptional power, it is hard to disagree with the conclusion of the Assistant Data Protection Commissioner, that ‘perfectly innocent people are now having their private records pored over’.

I strongly believe in the light of these disclosures and the concerns expressed by the Data Commissioner’s Office that there is now a need to urgently review the operation of the powers and to establish if we need to strengthen the protection available to the public against potential abuses. The 2005 Act allows for the public to make a complaint to a ‘Complaints Referee’ but the fact is that a person has no way of knowing whether or not their records have been accessed by the Gardai in order to make a complaint. The Act also provides that the High Court Judge designated under the 1993 Interception of Postal Packets and Telecommunications Messages (Regulation) Act to review the operation by the Gardai of telephone tapping would also review the new provisions in regard to requests for telephone records, but as far as I am aware no report has yet been published.

The Gardai are entitled to all reasonable powers to enable them to fight international terrorism and organised crime, but there have to be safeguards built in to ensure that these exceptional powers are not used except in the circumstances envisaged by the Oireachtas. The 10,000 requests lodged during 2006 that the balance intended by the Oireachtas has not been achieved.

2 comments February 26th, 2007

Media Roundup

DRI was mentioned last week in the Examiner (Conor Ryan – Garda gear up to tackle crime with car cameras) and the BBC News Site (Jane Wakefield – Confusion over ‘data snooping’ laws). Also, TJ spoke on Dave Fanning’s Drivetime show last night. (Program available at that link.)

[edited to add: DRI is also mentioned in the Sunday Times (Colin Coyle - Gardaí snoop on thousands of calls, 25/2/2007) - unfortunately, the Irish edition of the Sunday Times no longer seems to be available online.]

3 comments February 22nd, 2007

SkyCon talk – Sleepwalking into a Surveillance Society?

We were delighted to be invited to Limerick last weekend for the very enjoyable SkyCon where TJ gave a talk on whether we are “Sleepwalking into a Surveillance Society?”

The talk got off to a promising start when we were met with this sign at the door:

For more on “Sleepwalking into a Surveillance Society?” see the comments of the English Information Commissioner and his Report (PDF) which compares the Surveillance Society of 2006 with a possible Society of 2016.

1 comment February 19th, 2007

Dublin City-Wide WiFi – Privacy Implications?

It’s great to see that Dublin City Council are planning free wireless internet access for Dublin – hopefully replacing the expensive and patchy coverage currently available.

One issue that will be important in designing and implementing this system is whether it respects the privacy of its users. This has already been controversial in San Francisco where the ACLU have criticised the proposed ad-supported model:

“The business model of a municipal wireless system should not include tracking and profiling user activities in order to sell or trade data or develop targeted advertising based on user information and online activities,” an attachment to the letter argued. “Such a business model creates an incentive to collect as much data about an individual and maintain it for as long as possible in order to create profiles about users.”

At the moment, the Dublin project is still at the planning stage, with the Council tendering for advice. Consequently, we’ve written to the Head of IT in Dublin City Council (Brian Curtis) asking him to let us know how privacy and data protection issues are dealt with in that tender and to include us in the consultation process to ensure that privacy issues are dealt with from the start.

2 comments February 8th, 2007