Data Privacy in Ireland
Karlin Lillington has a very interesting report on data retention in the Republic of Ireland. As Karlin discovered Ireland 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 at least three years
. This was done without consultation and in a way that meant that the Data Protection Commissioner couldn’t come public with the information. How ironic!
This is slowly coming out due to the shambles of a consultation process currently underway for the proposed data retention bill. No real discussion going on, people not being informed of “public” meetings and a seeming lack of interest or understanding from the media, a few notable exceptions, such as Karlin, aside.
Ireland has come on in leaps and bounds in some aspects during the last 20 years. Great progress has been made in some areas with changes that seemed unlikely when I was a child. People are staying at home rather than emigrating, while other people are returning home with the real prospect of a job. For the first time in a long time it looks like we might be getting onto our feet, and now we’re trying to undermine one of the industries we’ve made progress in, as well as make the country less attractive for investment and people coming home.
I’m not saying that everything is rosy in Ireland, it’s not. There are problems, some of them serious, such as a scary amount of racism. There’s also the whole issue of Northern Ireland, which attracts it’s own share of fools. As for a certain number of our politicians, they scare me. None of this means that we should fail to worry about the data retention issue. It’s big, even if some quarters of society don’t see it that way.