My published journalism on the data retention issue:

Departments at odds on data retention bill: A set of internal information notes between officials in the Department of Communications, the Marine and Natural Resources, which is charged with supporting the development of a competitive telecommunications and technology infrastructure, shows the Department is not falling for some of the arguments that both the Department of Justice and the Garda have put forward in defence of this Bill. [27 June 2003]

Data retention plans cause considerable unease: The Department of Communications, Marine & Natural Resources has expressed grave concerns about the negative impact and high costs to businesses of the Justice Department's proposed data retention Bill, it has emerged. According to comments, seen by The Irish Times, made last September on a confidential preliminary draft of the Bill, the Department of Communications also believes "the proposed retention period of three years might be considered excessive from the point of view of civil liberties and an individual's right to privacy". [Irish Times, 23 June 2003]

Lobby condemns data storage plans: Plans by the Irish Government and others to store records of all phone and mobile calls, emails and internet usage "will result in massive costs" and should be dropped, according to four of the world's largest business and technology industry groups. [Irish Times, 6 June 2003]

Court threat for State over data privacy: Data Protection Commissioner Mr Joe Meade has twice threatened to begin High Court proceedings against the Government for using an "invalid" Ministerial Direction to unconstitutionally store citizens' phone, fax and mobile call data, it has emerged. According to correspondence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Mr Meade obtained legal advice which said the Direction was "in breach of Article 15.2.1 of the Constitution", lacked "the character of law", and was "in breach of the principles of... Community law". [Irish Times, 26 May 2003]

Don't believe State on data retention: Don't believe everything the Government tells you. In particular don't believe the official line being spun (and I do mean spun) about its proposed three-year Data Retention Bill. At least two TDs have tabled questions to the Minister for Justice Mr McDowell about this proposal. The replies sent to both Fine Gael deputy Mr Richard Bruton and Sinn Féin deputy Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh are - to say the least - disingenuous. [Irish Times, 14 Mar 2003]

Secret data traffic direction may break law: A Cabinet direction last April ordering phone companies to secretly retain the telephone call records of Irish citizens for three years may violate European law and the Irish Constitution, according to Irish and international legal experts. Commentators – including the Data Protection Commissioner, Mr Joe Meade -- have also expressed grave concern that the Direction was enacted in a such a way that it was not subject to Oireachtas oversight or judicial review. [6 Mar 2003]

New data proposals could scare off business: the Story of the Week in the Irish Times business section: "This is a really bad idea and makes no business sense whatsoever. In all dimensions this will have a very negative impact on Ireland's competitiveness as an e-business location," said Mr Annrai O'Toole, chairman of the Digital Business Council of the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland. He is also executive chairman of Cape Clear Software and one of the founders of Iona Technologies.

ICT Ireland, the information and communications technology industry group, is also worried. "The member companies are most concerned at developments at a national level regarding this proposed legislation," said director Mr Brendan Butler. "There has been little or no consultation with industry." He worries that such a bill could "damage Ireland's international reputation as a location of choice for foreign direct investment". [Irish Times, 28 Feb 2003]

Ireland secretly retaining phone data:  revealed at Monday's Forum on the proposed data retention bill. "The State has had a secret data retention regime for almost a year, after the Cabinet confidentially instructed telecommunications operators to store traffic information about every phone, fax and mobile call for three years. "The Data Protection Commissioner, Mr Joe Meade, revealed that the former minister for public enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, issued secret directions for data retention when a dispute arose between the operators and his office over how long they should hold such data." [Irish Times 25 Feb 03]

Consultation over data Bill is a farce: At stake is the greatest mass compromising of personal privacy ever proposed in this State. The Department that is proposing to limit long-accepted personal freedoms and privacy rights must not be allowed to conduct afterthought consultations when its own bias is already so clearly displayed. If the Dáil lacks the backbone its British and American counterparts have shown in crushing such proposals, it must at least place an independent, multi-party Dáil committee in charge of the consultative process. [Irish Times 21 Feb 03]

Dail must block 'Big Brother' Bill from McDowell: The vulnerability of such information has led Europe's Data Protection Commissioners to consistently and strongly oppose holding data traffic records of any sort for longer than six months. The commissioners have also noted that retaining data for such long periods keeps years of personal data available for trawling expeditions. Already, existing databases are regularly misused in this way.

For example, Detroit's main newspaper, the Free Press, has revealed that more than 90 Michigan police officers, dispatchers, federal agents and security guards have abused the Law Enforcement Information Network, a database which is supposed to be used for fighting crime. Instead, it was used to get information to intimidate and harass individuals, to produce details for officers' child custody battles and to get personal information on women whom male officers found attractive. One Michigan officer is accused of planning his wife's murder using the network. In Nevada, a former FBI agent was convicted of selling sensitive informant details and data on ongoing criminal investigations from police databases to criminals and the Mafia. [Irish Times, 31 Dec 2002]

Odious law will create Big Brother: Last week, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, whose department has been drafting just such a proposal since the EU vote, denied that it was anything other than a reasonable attempt to catch truly evil criminals, such as terrorists. He also emphatically stated that such a proposal would not turn the State into Big Brother. But it absolutely does. Because the point at which the State decides that it must hold potential evidence for years in anticipation of as yet uncommitted crimes is the point at which the State has decided that all of its citizens are potential suspects and criminals. [Irish Times 6 Dec 2002]

McDowell rejects article in data retention: The Minister for Justice has described as "misleading" an article in yesterday's Irish Times which revealed plans to retain detailed personal data on phone and mobile calls, faxes and e-mail and Internet usage for several years. [Irish Times, 29 Nov 2002]

Department wants to store data on citizens for four years: "We have serious concerns that this  is treating everybody as a potential suspect in a crime," said Mr Malachy Murphy, e-rights convener with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. "This would also appear to go against the European Convention on Human Rights, which has explicit protections for citizen privacy." [Irish Times, 28 Nov 2002]

Bill would allow personal data to be stored for four years: Under pressure from international law enforcement agencies, the Republic has become one of the first EU nations to draft controversial legislation that could allow personal data to be retained for up to four years. [Irish Times, 28 Nov 2002]

War on liberties escalates: But the erosion of rights continues. A sheeplike European Parliament - including nearly every Irish member - obediently accepted arguments it had rejected many times before from surveillance agencies and decided last spring to approve plans to retain massive amounts of personal data from its citizens, for as long as seven years. Now, a US federal appeals court panel of judges - which meets in secret - has overturned a lower court judgment and decided to allow the Bush administration broad authority to monitor people's activity on the internet, including recording their keystrokes, and to collate all that data with other surveillance agency data into one enormous database. [Irish Times, 22 Nov 2002]

Poor Irish showing at Brussels a severe blow for e-privacy: The irony could not be deeper. Hot on the heels of a national election in which all political parties and independents spoke about the importance of the strength and will of the people, of the value of the democratic process and of the importance of protecting the growth of the national economy, the majority of our MEPs have shown that, actually, they care about none of these things.

On May 30th, in a disgraceful vote, the European Parliament threw out the most basic protections on privacy and civil rights - protections it had spent the previous decade reinforcing through its data protection directives. Now, all electronic data you generate can be held indefinitely and spied upon.That includes all your e-mail, all your land and mobile phone calls, all your faxes, all the details of websites you've visited. The cost of doing this will be borne by the telecommunications industry itself. [Irish Times, 7 June 2002]

Government support for data plan at odd with own policies: The Irish Government is supporting a controversial EU proposal requiring telecommunications providers to retain all data from faxes, emails and internet use, phone and mobile calls for up to seven years. The proposal from the EU Telecommunications Council is designed to give additional power to law enforcement, but would overturn existing privacy guarantees that form the basis of EU data protection law. [Irish Times 3 Aug 2001]

Other news media on Irish and UK data retention proposals:

Commentary from Alan Ruddock in the Irish Sunday Independent: Principle of freedom is under threat: "TRY as he might, Michael McDowell cannot be allowed to flick carelessly to one side a report that he is considering introducing legislation so illiberal, and so invasive, that it threatens the very principles of personal freedom that are meant to be enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and which should be the basis of any civilised society." [Dec 01 2002]

Scrap data retention plans, say MPS: "An inquiry by a cross-party group of MPs says that not only should the government drop its data retention plans, but they should be scrapped across Europe. An all-party parliamentary inquiry has recommended that the government drop its plans to make ISPs indiscriminately keep records of every email sent or received, and every Web site visited, by UK citizens. In a hard-hitting report, the All-party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG), said the data retention powers, contained in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security (ATCS) Act, should be scrapped. Neither a voluntary nor a mandatory data retention scheme would work, said the inquiry." [ZDNet UK, 29 Jan 2003]

Parliamentary inquiry rejects data retention: "The inquiry looked at the retention scheme proposed in the Anti-Terrorism Crime & Security Act 2001 (ATCS) which would have meant that logging data was kept for up to twelve months. It concluded that the Government had underestimated the costs of the scheme, that billing databases would migrate abroad to escape regulation and that there were few incentives for industry to help the government track technical change. To cap all this, the scheme appeared to be in breach of Human Rights legislation and despite a year of effort by the Home Office, no solution was in sight.

The evidence heard by the inquiry made it clear that the proposed voluntary ATCS scheme had no hope of acceptance by industry. The report also concludes that it would be impractical to proceed with the fallback of mandatory data retention and strongly recommends that the Home Office scrap their plans altogether and start negotiations on a lower impact scheme of targeted "data preservation" instead." [28 Jan 2003]

This Page was last update: 27/06/2003; 23:45:08
Copyright 2003 Karlin Lillington
Theme Design by Bryan Bell