The new Irish ban on social media posts from court

I have an opinion piece in the Irish Independent on the new practice direction restricting social media posts from the courtroom. Here's an excerpt:

In 2011, the English courts introduced rules preventing anyone other than journalists or lawyers from posting to social media in the courtroom; the new Irish rules are largely identical, and seem to have been prompted now by judicial concern at both the Jobstown trial and the Belfast rugby rape trial. The #JobstownNotGuilty and #IBelieveHer hashtags show a growing popular willingness to second-guess the judicial process and this ban can be seen as a direct response.

There are certainly good reasons for banning live tweeting in some cases, particularly in criminal trials where much takes place in the absence of the jury.

However, the speech by the Chief Justice did not make the case for the blanket ban which was introduced. All the examples of abuse he gave related to criminal trials - there is no obvious reason why civil trials, which normally do not have a jury, should be treated in the same way. This is equally true of appeal courts, which hear legal argument rather than evidence, and in the UK the Supreme Court allows any person attending a hearing to live tweet except in special circumstances.

The restriction to "bona fide members of the news media profession" is also problematic. In his speech, the Chief Justice equated "hobby journalists" with "the single contrarian in a basement".

However this disregards a number of Irish and European judgments stressing the high constitutional value of citizen journalism; restricting live coverage to those who can produce traditional media credentials has the merit of administrative convenience but will limit many who could provide useful and informed coverage of proceedings.

Full text of the article.

Ireland must learn from UK data protection and ID disasters

I have a piece in today's Irish Times on the approach of the Irish state to privacy. In short: there's a lot of room for improvement. Text below with added links.

Ireland must learn from UK data protection and ID disasters

The growth of the public services card as a de facto national ID card has attracted a lot of media attention recently, with special credit due to Elaine Edwards of this newspaper for her persistence in excavating the facts on which most of the later reporting has been based.

The issue continues to rumble on, and the Data Protection Commissioner has asked the Department of Social Protection to explain the legal basis for the claim that the card is mandatory. One month later, despite repeated promises, the department has not yet done so.

More could be written about the public services card, and the varying and sometimes contradictory claims put forward to support it. But if we focus on the card we risk missing the wider picture, which is that the card is not an aberration but exemplifies a systematic disregard for privacy and data protection throughout the State.

Consider the Department of Health. In a remarkable statement to the Dáil earlier this month, Minister for Health Simon Harris admitted that Ireland “remains in breach of both European Union and national data protection legislation” by keeping a database of blood samples from newborn children without the consent of their parents. Following a complaint in 2009, the Data Protection Commissioner ordered that these samples be destroyed. However, the Department of Health has failed to comply and is instead proceeding with plans to retain the database and to open it up for research and possible other uses.

This defiance of the law raises significant questions for the independence of the Data Protection Commissioner, who has taken no enforcement action against this challenge to her statutory authority. The message to the State is that it can ignore data protection law with impunity.

Since 2014, the Department of Health has also been involved in developing health identification numbers and electronic health records schemes, which present significant issues of privacy and confidentiality. For example, by requiring the use of health identification numbers these schemes tie together potentially leak-sensitive information about an individual’s medical history, despite an earlier promise that use of these numbers would be voluntary. It is hard to trust assurances from the department on this issue given that it is already, by its own admission, in deliberate breach of data protection law.

We see the same picture elsewhere.

In 2014, An Garda Síochána started using body-worn cameras in an ad hoc way, without any legislation or formal safeguards. The Garda five-year modernisation plan says that the Garda will start taking video feeds from the National Roads Authority, local authorities and private car park operators to run automatic number plate recognition systems – creating a national database of people’s travel to be stored for an unspecified period.

That plan also says that, from 2017, the Garda will start using “face-in-the-crowd and shape-in-the-crowd biometrics” to identify people on CCTV systems. Again, all of this is to take place without any legal basis, in a manner that appears to be contrary to data protection law. It seems the Garda has not learned any institutional lessons from the 2014 scandal around the recording of calls to and from Garda stations, nor from the ongoing concerns about abuse of the Pulse system.

The common pattern in these cases is that fundamental rights are viewed as inconvenient obstacles. This is a paternalistic view, in which the institution knows best and public concern can be disregarded. However, this approach merely stores up problems for the future. There are lessons for Ireland from the UK, where many of these issues have already been played out.

In 2002, the UK government launched a National Health Service-wide electronic health records system which failed to adequately address patient confidentiality. This was eventually scrapped in 2011, in large part due to concerns about privacy, and replaced with systems which guarantee that patients can opt out of data sharing. The ultimate cost was in the region of £10 billion.

The public services card has a parallel in the UK, where ID cards and a National Identity Register were introduced by legislation in 2006, only to be abandoned and the data destroyed in 2011 following extensive public opposition. Similar to the public services card, the UK ID card had no clear rationale and was ultimately rejected by the Tory/Lib Dem coalition government as “wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive”, at an eventual cost of about £5 billion.

The increasing Garda use of CCTV, facial recognition and number-plate recognition also echoes the UK, where both the information commissioner and the independent surveillance camera commissioner have described similar practices by UK police forces as intrusive, disproportionate and illegal.

The message from these UK examples is clear. While state authorities may push ahead with plans which ignore concerns about privacy and data protection, the law will eventually catch up with them, usually at significant cost to the taxpayer. Fundamental rights are factors which must be taken into account at the outset, not reluctantly considered when a scheme is already being implemented.

As the Data Protection Commissioner put it in her most recent annual report: “Public-sector bodies and Government departments are in many cases slow to adjust to the reality that data-protection rights cannot simply be legislated away without sufficient necessity and proportionality analysis and prejudice tests being applied.”

The failure of the State to accept these points has already squandered public trust in areas such as the public services card, and seems likely to do so in other areas such as electronic health records.

Dr TJ McIntyre is a lecturer in the UCD Sutherland School of Law, a solicitor with FP Logue Solicitors and the chair of Digital Rights Ireland

Letter regarding the Public Services Card

I'm very grateful to my colleagues who have signed a letter expressing concern at the growing use of the (supposedly optional) public services card as a mandatory requirement for essentials as passports and social welfare, creating a de facto national ID card or Ireland without public debate.

The full text of the letter and the signatories are below.

Oversight of phone tapping in Ireland: still inadequate

Following allegations of abuse of phone tapping by Irish police, I have an opinion piece in today's Irish Independent explaining why oversight mechanisms in this area are ineffective. Here's a flavour:

The reaction of the Department of Justice and An Garda Síochána to the latest phone-tapping scandal has been a predictable circling of the wagons. As usual, those bodies have refused to address the details of the allegations. We have seen generic statements, asserting that there is a legal basis for phone tapping and that it is subject to judicial oversight. 

The problem with that response is simple: it is clear that both the Irish law on phone tapping and the way it is implemented fail to meet fundamental international standards. 

Take the most basic starting point: who decides whether a phone tap should take place? International human rights law requires that interception of communications be authorised by a judge or an equivalent independent body. In Ireland, however, this power is given to the Justice Minister - leaving it open to allegations of political motivation. 

Irish law also falls down on the question of who can have their phones tapped. Contrary to international standards, there are no safeguards on phone tapping targeting lawyers, journalists or parliamentarians. 

Unusually for a Western democracy, Ireland does not have separate security and police agencies. Instead, both roles are combined in An Garda Síochána. The result is a blurring of the boundaries between the two functions which means that all surveillance ends up being concealed in unnecessary secrecy. 

The Irish oversight system is also out of line with international practice. In almost all EU member states, there are parliamentary committees which can oversee surveillance by security agencies. Ireland is one of only four EU states which does not make its security agency accountable to parliament. Instead, in security matters the Garda Commissioner answers only to the Justice Minister - the same person who is responsible for decisions to tap phones in the first place.

I've written more about the issue in the chapter "Judicial Oversight of Surveillance: The Case of Ireland in Comparative Perspective" (2016), full text online at the UCD research repository.

Back in the saddle

I'm delighted to be able to say that starting this week I'll be working as a consultant with FP Logue Solicitors. The partners - Fred Logue and Niall Rooney - have an excellent track record in business law, with a focus on brands, intellectual property, technology law and information law generally, making for a great fit with my own areas of interest. I greatly enjoy practice as well as research and teaching, and I've always found that each informs the other. Obligatory press release and group photo.

Search warrants and privacy in Ireland - CRH, Irish Cement & Lynch v. CCPC

The High Court gave a very important judgment yesterday (Independent.ie story) on the issues raised by the use of a search warrant to seize an entire email account where many of the emails in the account were not caught by the terms of the warrant. To grossly simplify a complicated decision, Barrett J. held that where the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) had seized an entire email account it was not itself entitled to carry out a "sifting" exercise to determine which emails fell within the scope of the warrant - instead, this had to be done by some impartial vetting process. In the lack of a suitable statutory mechanism, this could be done by agreement between the parties.

The full decision isn't yet on the courts.ie site, but courtesy of the CCPC I've uploaded a scanned copy to Scribd. The full decision will need careful consideration, but at first glance it's a very privacy protective decision which may have far reaching consequences in other areas of criminal procedure. Notably, it cites with approval the 2013 Canadian Supreme Court decision in R. v. Vu on the special privacy issues presented by searches of computers. (And, I'm glad to see, the Digital Rights Ireland litigation.) By requiring specificity in what is seized and how that material is then examined, it puts a question mark over other search powers - such as those under s.48 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001 - which are generally used so as to seize an entire computer and not merely specific records.

Destroying the history of those victimised by the State

Fiona de Londras has a letter in the Irish Times today, co-signed by a range of prominent lawyers, highlighting an injustice about to be done by the Irish state. The letter is worth quoting in full:

As human rights lawyers we note with great concern the proposal that records of applicants to the symphysiotomy payment scheme would be shredded after March 20th.

This would reinforce the harm done to women by the physical and symbolic destruction of official medical records attesting to the abuse and harm they experienced. Furthermore it would lead to the destruction of vital records and evidence that might be of assistance in future legal, historiographical and political processes of recording the symphysiotomy in Ireland and ensuring accountability for these instances of inhumane and harmful treatment.

The UN Human Rights Committee has called for a “prompt, independent and thorough investigation into cases of symphysiotomy” leading to prosecutions where appropriate.

It is likely that Ireland is under a positive obligation to hold such an inquiry under the European Convention on Human Rights

That these records would be returned to the applicants to the scheme is, thus, of paramount importance.

We note that applicants to this scheme were obliged to provide “relevant supporting records”. They were not informed that these records would be destroyed, that they should send or retain certified copies, or that by applying to the scheme through submission of these records they were at risk of losing this documentary evidence of their medical mistreatment

The limitations of data storage at hospitals are such that such records, if destroyed, might not be capable of retrieval elsewhere, and in some cases processes for accessing records can be so difficult to navigate as to be almost inaccessible.

Thus, we call on Ms Justice Harding Clarke to reconsider this, and to ensure that all records are returned to the applicants to the scheme, by registered post, at the earliest possible date. Under no circumstances should they be destroyed.

We also endorse the call from Marie O’Connor of Survivors of Symphysiotomy that applicants to the scheme be asked for their consent to these records being archived. 

Quite apart from the collective harm involved, the destruction of these records will be a significant wrong to the individual women. They were told that "the Assessor  shall,  where  reasonably possible, arrange  for  the  return  to  the  Applicant  or  her  Solicitor  of  any  documents submitted". The plan to shred these documents is a direct breach of this promise and makes it likely that the women will not be able to get copies of those documents from other sources.

The issue is urgent. The documents will be destroyed unless "an option letter" is received by 20th March. However, there is an interim solution for those affected: a subject access request under the Data Protection Acts will, in effect, stop the clock. Daragh O'Brien has details of the steps to take.

How trustworthy is Microsoft's "data trustee"?

Yesterday Microsoft announced a radical new structure for some of its European data centres. In an attempt to put customer data beyond the reach of the US government, it has entered into a relationship with Deutsche Telekom which will operate new European facilities on its behalf and act as "trustee" for data held there. The aim is that:

[Microsoft] employees will have no access to the data held at the facilities without the German company’s permission. The companies believe this arrangement means Microsoft will not have to respond to governmental demands for information held in these data centres, forcing official requests to go through German authorities instead.

This is a direct response to the ongoing US litigation asserting that the Stored Communications Act has extraterritorial effect and captures data which Microsoft holds in Dublin or anywhere else worldwide. The harm to its European cloud operations has forced Microsoft's hand - rather than waiting for the result of the appeal in that case (or proposed amendments which would cut back the extraterritorial effect of US law) it has opted to put itself in a position where it simply can't comply with US demands.

But how trustworthy is Microsoft's trustee? Deutsche Telekom looks like an unfortunate choice. It's probably best known in privacy circles for systematically using its phone records to spy on journalists writing critical stories about it - including tracking journalists' movements using mobile phone data. It's deeply ironic that Deutsche Telekom now sees privacy as a selling point when it previously spied on its users not in response to government demands but simply for its own commercial advantage.

Law Society Annual Human Rights Conference

I spoke at the Law Society's 2015 Annual Human Rights Conference last Saturday about privacy and surveillance online in light of recent CJEU decisions - a particularly topical area following the decision in Schrems. I was joined on my panel by Karlin Lillington, the journalist whose advocacy was responsible for data retention being treated as a civil liberties issue in Ireland, and the session was chaired by Michael McDowell who as Minister for Justice was responsible for introducing data retention in Ireland in 2005 and was one of the main proponents behind data retention at a European level. As you would expect with this range of views, there was a full and interesting discussion of privacy generally and the specific area of state surveillance. Unfortunately there's no recording of the conference, but I've embedded my own slides below.

  Presentation at Law Society Human Rights Conference 10 October 2015

The Law Society will be making available other slides/papers from the conference - including hopefully the very interesting papers from Olivia O'Kane on privacy and the media and Judge Michael O'Reilly on prisoners' rights - and I'll link to those once they are put up.

Whitewashing your internet profile: political edition

Irish politicians are getting nervous. Although the government still insists it will serve out its full term, insiders are muttering about the possibility of a post-budget snap election. It's no coincidence, therefore, that they are now looking to clean up their online presence and two stories from this week are particularly telling.

First Alan Kinsella, of the invaluable Irish Election Literature website, tweets:

Have had a number of requests so far from candidates/election agents to take down their 2011 election material from the site #ge16

— Alan Kinsella (@electionlit) September 14, 2015

Second, an anonymous user from an Oireachtas IP address attempted a systematic (but ultimately unsuccessful) whitewashing of the Wikipedia entry for Senator Jim Walsh, deleting all reference to various gaffes by him through the years.

There's nothing new about attempts to suppress unfavourable information about Irish politicians - and the current stories are nowhere near the seriousness of the recent incident in which the aide to Derek Keating TD dumped several thousand copies of a local freesheet containing a critical story about his boss. But these examples still raise interesting issues for lawyers. In the case of the Irish Election Literature website - should politicians be able to invoke what would presumably be a copyright argument in order to conceal their past promises? In the case of Wikipedia, should edits made by TDs, Senators or their staff about themselves be disclosed? (Wikipedia certainly thinks so.) More generally, how should Irish law deal with sites such as Politwoops which archive deleted tweets from politicians? Is Twitter correct in saying that politicians should be able to delete their ill thought out tweets without that fact being highlighted - or should we accept that what politicians say is inherently newsworthy?

The Irish courts have yet to confront most of these issues - but it will be interesting to see what happens in an ongoing case brought by a Dublin election candidate who has invoked the "right to be forgotten" against online discussion of his election literature. Hopefully this will result in a judicial statement affirming the strong public interest in political discussion.

Downloading or accessing certain material could constitute a criminal offence

Poster put up in London internet cafes from 2010 onwards

Background:

It's not about asking owners to spy on their customers, it's about raising awareness," a police spokesman said, speaking anonymously in line with force policy. "We don't ask them to pass on data for us."Still, he said, police were "encouraging people to check on hard drives." He did not elaborate, saying it would be up to cafe owners to decide if or how to monitor what customers left on their computers.

PPS numbers: internet saviours?

Bank Holiday Mondays are quiet news days, making them a good time to get any old nonsense into the newspaper. Today is no exception as the Irish Times appears to have taken the opportunity for a special edition of breathless internet fear-mongering.

The prime example is this piece which makes the literally incredible assertion that "The PPS number provides the Irish Government with an opportunity to dramatically improve the safety of children and young people online." (Following on, no doubt, from the success of PPS numbers in the delivery of water services.) In effect, the author is demanding internet identity cards for the wider population. This is an astonishingly bad idea, as anybody with even a passing familiarity with the Korean internet ID fiasco should know.

So why is the author pushing this? The byline reveals that the author is "founder and CEO of TrustElevate, a technology products and services company that specialises in regulatory, policy and compliance online." But what the byline doesn't say is that her firm is selling the technology which the article promotes. According to its own site, "Trust Elevate is a UK-based technology solutions and advisory company. Our focus is on identity, privacy, security and safety from the perspectives of reputational compliance and commercial opportunities."

In short, the author is shilling her own service under the guise of an impartial opinion piece. This is bad enough in itself, but more fundamentally it is a distraction from what really needs to be done to protect children online.

At the most basic level, gardaí are dramatically under-resourced in dealing with the internet. The 2014 Garda Inspectorate report revealed there have been up to four year delays in analysing seized computers; that the Paedophile Investigation Unit had one (!) computer to receive and download evidence; that 40% of Garda stations are not networked and have no access to PULSE or internal email; that evidence cannot be shared electronically; and that even in networked stations many gardaí have no access to social media or external email.

One might expect that those genuinely interested in child welfare would address these basic points first. But where's the profit in that?


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Some excerpts from the Garda Inspectorate Report - emphasis mine:

The current Garda Síochána IT system restricts the sending of evidence electronically, resulting in investigators having to travel to Dublin to view evidence. PIU only have access to one standalone computer to receive and download evidence, as they are unable to use PULSE. This is a fundamental tool for investigation of these crimes. When evidence arrives, it can take days to download information and this removes the availability of the computer to be used by investigators coming to the unit to view evidence for other cases. PIU gave an example where one case had over 8,000 videos.

Another problem area is the restriction placed on districts accessing social media sites. As a result, the PIU is swamped with requests from districts for help in cases under investigation. Since 2001, the unit has used a paper system for managing investigations and would like to move to an electronic system. Internally, the PIU uses an electronic spread sheet to monitor cases. There is a concern that two investigators could potentially be looking at the same suspect, without knowing that another garda is also investigating a crime against the same suspect. Like the SOMU, all PIU staff work on the same roster and again are all off-duty at the same time.

The delay in obtaining evidence from analysis of computers has contributed to a situation where no PIU investigation case file has been sent to the DPP for directions in the last four years of operation.

A consistent theme throughout the inspection of national and district intelligence units was that outdated IT equipment blocked them from accessing or viewing evidence about a crime. The Inspectorate was informed that the National Intelligence Unit is working on outdated software and is unable to load PDF documents and to view photographs. CIOs in particular experience daily challenges in accessing the necessary IT applications and equipment to perform their role effectively. CIOs often use personal laptops and computers to view CCTV footage, to download stills and to turn those stills into briefing documents and bulletins. This represents a risk of breaching security of intelligence data, but their motive is to ensure that intelligence is provided to local gardaí.

The access of gardaí to external e-mail was very inconsistent across the seven divisions. Some members stated that they had no external e-mail access and other gardaí explained that if you apply for access then it will be given. Many victims would like the option to use e-mail to communicate directly with the garda dealing with their case and it would ensure that the member actually received their message.

"Homophobe" brings Ireland's first "right to be forgotten" court case

A fascinating story in today's Irish Times details what seems to be the first court case in Ireland following the Google Spain ruling. However a less sympathetic plaintiff would be hard to find. The case is being brought by a Dublin man, Mark Savage of Lios Cian, Swords, who ran in the 2014 local elections on a platform which included reference to "Gay Perverts cavorting in flagrante on the beach in broad daylight". His election literature speaks for itself (click to enlarge):

Unsurprisingly, he was not elected. He now apparently objects to a Reddit thread characterising him as "Mark Savage - North County Dublin's homophobic candidate". Following an unsuccessful request to Google to have that thread deindexed, he complained to the Data Protection Commissioner who refused to order that Google do so. He has now appealed against that decision to the Circuit Court. I look forward to a full hearing, though I doubt it will be over in his optimistic estimate of two hours and I doubt he will be successful in his claim that Google should censor discussion of his views as publicly stated in an election campaign. If anything, this appears to be a complaint of defamation dressed up as a data protection matter.

Edited to add: Incidentally, the case also highlights an important structural point - chances are that most of the RTBF cases which become public will involve plaintiffs with relatively weak claims. The individuals with strong arguments to be deindexed will probably succeed in private at the point of initial contact with Google or else before the data protection authority. The only cases to be subject to public scrutiny before the courts will be those where both of the initial decision makers have found that the request should not be granted.

Two data retention cases pose questions for three Ministers for Justice

Two cases have now been brought in Ireland seeking to take advantage of the Digital Rights Ireland decision from the European Court of Justice in order to exclude evidence in criminal trials. First, a case stated in the prosecution of a detective garda alleged to have given false information to GSOC; second, a challenge brought by convicted murderer Graham Dwyer - commenced in January but made public only on his conviction last week.

Given how central internet and phone evidence is to many prosecutions, the only surprise is that it's taken this long for these challenges to be brought and no doubt more will come. Unfortunately it is possible that at least some convictions will be overturned as a result - and the blame for this will lie squarely with the Department of Justice and successive ministers.

Ministers Dermot Ahern, Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald in particular have questions to answer.

Dermot Ahern knew in 2011 that data retention was on very shaky ground. By then data retention laws had been struck down in Bulgaria (2008), Romania (2009) and Germany (2010) - and the Irish challenge was pending before the High Court which had decided that the case raised "important constitutional questions". At this point the Irish law should have been reformed to provide for data preservation and include adequate safeguards identified by those cases, such as a requirement for a judge to approve access to data. Instead the law adopted in 2011 was equally flawed.

Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald are equally if not more at fault. It was clear from the Advocate General's opinion in December 2013 that the Data Retention Directive would be struck down. But instead of replacing the 2011 law implementing the Directive both ministers adopted the ostrich position. There has been nothing but radio silence from the Minister for Justice since the Data Retention Directive was invalidated just under a year ago. It may be that she hopes by ignoring the problem it will go away. But by doing so she is only ensuring that many more prosecutions and convictions will be put at risk. As I previously predicted, "by continuing to keep its head in the sand the State is only storing up problems for the future".

Mixed internet messages from the Indian Supreme Court

The Indian Supreme Court today gave a landmark decision on the Information Technology Act 2000. Most media coverage has focused on the fact that the court struck down section 66A - the offensive messages provision - finding that it was unconstitutionally vague and would have a chilling effect on freedom of expression. This is significant for the ongoing Irish debate on "cyberbullying". The Irish offence of sending offensive messages by telephone is extremely similar to the Indian s.66A offence and there have been calls to extend it to the internet. Today's judgment suggests that this would be unconstitutional. As the Indian Supreme Court stated:

[The English cases] illustrate how judicially trained minds would find a person guilty or  not guilty depending upon the Judge’s notion of what is “grossly offensive” or “menacing”.  In Collins’ case, both the Leicestershire Justices and two Judges of the Queen’s Bench would have acquitted Collins whereas the House of Lords convicted him.  Similarly, in the Chambers case, the Crown Court would have convicted Chambers whereas the Queen’s Bench acquitted him. If  judicially trained minds can come to diametrically opposite conclusions on the same set of facts it is obvious that expressions such as “grossly offensive” or  “menacing”  are  so  vague  that  there  is  no  manageable standard by which a person can be said to have committed an offence or not to have committed an offence. Quite obviously, a prospective offender of Section 66A and the authorities who are to  enforce  Section  66A  have  absolutely  no  manageable standard by which  to  book a  person for an offence under Section 66A.

There's been less attention to the court's disappointing findings upholding the section 69A government power to order the blocking of websites where "necessary or expedient so to do, in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of  any cognizable offence relating to above". According to the court, the procedural safeguards established around blocking were sufficient to protect freedom of expression, despite the fact that blocking is ordered by the government itself rather than an independent body:

It will be noticed that Section 69A unlike Section 66A is a narrowly drawn provision with several  safeguards. First  and foremost,  blocking can only be resorted to where the Central  Government is satisfied that it is necessary so to do. Secondly, such necessity is relatable only to  some of the subjects set out in Article 19(2). Thirdly, reasons have to be recorded in writing in such blocking order so that they may be assailed in a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.

The  Rules  further  provide  for a  hearing  before  the Committee set up - which Committee then looks into whether or not it is necessary to block such information. It is only when the Committee finds that there is such a necessity that a blocking order is made. It is also clear from an examination of Rule 8 that it  is  not  merely  the intermediary  who  may  be  heard. If  the “person” i.e. the originator  is identified he is also to be heard before a blocking order is passed. Above all, it is only after these procedural safeguards are met  that blocking orders are made and in case there is a certified copy of a court order, only then can such blocking order also be made.

Still, it is heartening to see that the Indian Supreme Court apparently considered it essential that both the intermediary and also the "originator" (the person who posts material) should be given the chance to be heard before a blocking order is made. In too many national schemes the only notice - if any - is to the host or social network, not the user.

Mobile phone records as evidence in Irish courts

Just before Christmas a murder trial collapsed when the prosecution failed to lay the correct evidential basis for admitting mobile phone records against the accused. There's no written judgment but according to media reports:

The State entered a nolle prosequi in the case after Judge Catherine Murphy ruled that telephone records held on a mainframe computer could not be relied on as evidence because there was no evidence that the computer was operating correctly at the relevant time... 

In her ruling at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court Judge Murphy said there must be evidence of the function and operation of the main frame computer, on which the call records are held. She said: “This must include information that the computer was operating correctly at the relevant time”. 

The ruling relies on a 1992 judgement from the UK appeal courts which held that the prosecution must provide evidence of the function and operation of the mainframe computer used to store the records. The Cochrane ruling, which has been upheld by the Irish courts, noted that “the problem of proving transactions of this type must now arise frequently and it should be possible… to devise a standard form of evidence to deal with it.” 

Judge Murphy had earlier ruled that the evidence of the records held on the Meteor mainframe server was not admissible under the 1992 Criminal Evidence Act because the act does not cover automatically held records. 

The evidence in this case was that the records were held, automatically, on the Meteor mainframe server. The prosecution then submitted to the Court that the records could be admitted under Common Law. Judge Murphy ruled against them on this and noted that the UK judgement states there must be evidence “that the computer was operating correctly at the relevant time”. 

The UK judgement states that the prosecution must provide “authoritative evidence about the operation of the relevant machines”. Judge Murphy noted that an engineer from Meteor gave evidence for the prosecution that he had working knowledge of the Meteor computer system but not of the mainframe computer from on the records were held.

Today it seems that another trial has collapsed on the same basis. According to the Irish Times:

The legal argument centred on whether records from mobile phone masts could be relied on to link the phones to the robbery by placing them at relevant times and places. Detectives have developed the network of phones out of a single call allegedly made from the Dublin Mountains to the Richardson family home during the kidnapping. Mrs Richardson testified that the gang had allowed her to call her husband from the mountains. In ruling on the defence application, made in the absence of the jury, Judge Ring said that none of the three mobile phone network experts called by the prosecution could say that the relevant networks were fully operational and functioning on a given day or whether any particular cell sites are out of operation on those relevant dates. She said there was evidence that calls could be routed through another mast if the nearest mast was not operational at the time or if it was busy.

The Cochrane judgment referred to in these reports is R v. Cochrane [1993] Crim LR 98, which was applied in Ireland in relation to mobile phone records by People (DPP) v. Colm Murphy [2005] IECCA 1. It's a little surprising, therefore, that admissibility has become such a contentious issue nearly a decade later. As far as I can tell from the newspaper reports, what has happened is that trial judges have become more familiar with the technology and have become more strict in insisting that the prosecution witnesses can testify to the operation of the system as a whole and not just particular components such as the masts. In the short term this is going to require prosecutors to put forward more technical witnesses from the mobile operators; longer term I wouldn't be surprised to see legislation rushed forward to provide a statutory basis for admitting these records (probably on the basis of certificate evidence).

Incidentally, this is certainly not limited to the case of mobile phone records - the same logic would apply to evidence of IP address allocation and use and other computer evidence. Expect these arguments to be played out soon in other cases involving computers.

Discovery of encrypted documents

Today's Irish Times has a story arising out of the Quinn litigation against the state which raises important issues around access to encrypted documents:

The family of Seán Quinn is demanding access to three letters sent between former minister for finance Brian Lenihan and then chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Donal O’Connor as part its €2.34 billion claim against the state.  This correspondence relates to late January 2009 and early February 2009, just after the state took the decision to nationalise Anglo as it tottered on the brink of collapse. The family also wants efforts to be made to crack a password-protected email sent by the bank’s chief executive David Drumm to Matt Moran, a close lieutenant, in the midst of the financial crisis in April 2008, according to documents filed in relation to their legal battle...

Legal advisers to the liquidators of IBRC, who are now in charge of Anglo, are refusing to release about 168 documents which they claim are legally privileged, with the exception of the email from Mr Drumm to Mr Moran which they cannot access... [The Quinns] have asked the liquidators of IBRC to instruct IT experts to crack the encoded email or give it to the family so that they can try to do so.

I've already looked at the encrypted Anglo files from a criminal law perspective, considering when police can demand that files be decrypted or that individuals hand over passwords. This case presents parallel civil law issues - when can a party in litigation demand that potentially relevant files be decrypted as part of the discovery process, when the other party does not have the relevant passwords?

This will be the first time this is considered by the Irish courts. There doesn't appear to be any case law on the topic, and it's not explicitly addressed in the Rules of the Superior Courts. It's also not considered in the Law Reform Commission's (rather disappointing) 2009 Consultation Paper on Documentary and Electronic Evidence. The closest Irish material is the 2013 Good Practice Guide to Electronic Discovery in Ireland which suggests that parties making discovery should if necessary attempt to break the protection on encrypted or password protected files (PDF, p.23).

I look forward to seeing the decision on this point.

Garda body cameras: quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Garda body worn camera - screencap from Dublin Says No protest video.

I had a piece in Saturday's Irish Independent on the implications of the new Garda body worn cameras being used at protests against water charges. There wasn't enough room in 750 words to tackle all the issues involved so here are some thoughts that didn't make it into the finished piece:

* While there is almost no transparency around the use of the cameras, for the moment it looks as though they are only being used at protests. This is a relatively straightforward case - public protests are the best case scenario for the use of cameras as situations where there is a limited privacy interest on both sides and a likelihood of confrontation - but isn't at all representative of the problems that would be faced if cameras were rolled out to ordinary policing. For example, would cameras be turned off when gardaí are in private homes? In hospitals?

* In particular, there is a real risk that the use of cameras in day to day policing will lead to a more wary relationship with the public. Will people be deterred from talking to gardaí for fear that their casual conversations may be recorded and reviewed?

* The main financial cost lies not in the cameras themselves but in the management of the recordings they generate. Video requires lots of storage and systems in place to deal with transfer of material from device to server, deletion of material once the retention period is up, flagging of particular recordings to be stored, search and retrieval of material which might be spread across a number of different stations, backups and archiving, ensuring that older file formats can still be read, responding to subject access requests, etc. Have these points have been taken into account in garda planning? Or will we end up with another case of garda tapes being stored randomly in cardboard boxes and covered in mould?

* At the moment garda management are saying very little about these new cameras. In a few months the Freedom of Information Act 2014 will be extended to An Garda Síochána - but in the meantime anyone who has been videoed at a protest can find out more by making a (free) request under s.3 of the Data Protection Acts to determine what data from the cameras are being held and the purposes for which they are being kept.

Watering down data protection

© P L Chadwick CC-BY-SA-2.0.

It was never likely that people would be happy about paying directly for their water. But public resentment has been stoked further by the invasive questions on the Irish Water application forms, which demand PPS numbers for the householder and all children before the free allowances are granted.
That resentment was only exacerbated when people looked at the data protection notice on the website to discover that Irish Water claims the right to use our personal information to market to us via unsolicited text messages, emails, junk mail and telephone calls and even to send salesmen to “contact the customer… in person”.

What do they propose to sell us? The website says that Irish Water or its agents may contact us about “water related products or services”, whatever those might be. Bathtubs? Swimming lessons? Boats? Perhaps we should expect phone calls at dinnertime which begin “Hi there. I’m calling you today because your body is 66% water.”

Irish Water also claims the right to send our information outside of Europe, which would allow outsourcing of their operations (for example, call centres or IT support) to a low cost location such as India. As originally drafted, their website also stated that information would be disclosed if Irish Water was bought by a third party – though they have since deleted this last point, no doubt because it is too close to the political hot potato that is privatisation of the water system.

Are Irish Water entitled to do these things with our information?

Let’s start with PPS numbers. There has been some talk of the criminal offence of requesting a PPS number without legal authority, but that is a red herring: since July Irish Water has been a specified body entitled to use PPS numbers.

However, the fact that they are seeking PPS numbers at all points to a flawed system

For example, Irish Water tell us that they need PPS numbers of children to confirm their eligibility for a water allowance. Yet the Department of Social Protection already holds this information in relation to child benefit. Rather than create an additional bureaucracy within Irish Water it would have been preferable to leave this within the existing state agency – for example, by simply adding the relevant amount to the child benefit payment. This is already being done for the household benefit, which will be increased by an additional €100 each year towards water bills without any need for anyone in Irish Water to know who is on household benefit.

(Using PPS numbers also creates a fresh problem. Many residents in Ireland - such as foreign students and foreign pensioners - will not have PPS numbers. What is to happen to their allowances?)

Quite apart from the initial request for PPS numbers there is also a problem with ongoing storage. While Irish Water may need PPS numbers to verify water allowances initially, that is no reason to continue storing them once this is done. It is a fundamental rule that personal information should not be stored for longer than necessary – especially in cases such as this, where Irish Water would end up holding a vast database which would be vulnerable to both corrupt insiders and outside attackers. Their apparent intention to store PPS numbers in this way is likely to breach data protection law - particularly if Irish Water follow through on what appears to be a half-baked plan to use PPS numbers to track down tenants for non-payment. Such a use would clearly be incompatible with the purpose for which they claim to be collecting the information.

The situation is no better in relation to marketing. For example, the assertion that Irish Water can send us unsolicited text messages and emails unless we object is wrong. Positive, opt-in consent is required by law before this can be done. Similarly, Irish Water is lacking in the mechanisms it provides to opt-out of marketing. The website makes opt-out excessively difficult by providing only a postal address and telephone number and (because it is not a freephone number) violating the requirement that opt-out should be free of charge. Indeed, it has since emerged that Irish Water staff answering that telephone number are actually unable to register opt-outs in the way promised by the privacy statement.

In relation to transferring our information outside Europe, Irish Water fails again. The website claims that “by submitting data to Irish Water” you agree to such transfers. However the fiction that you consent by filling out the registration form is unsustainable – as Irish Water is a monopoly and there is no choice but to fill out the form then any supposed consent would not be “freely given” as required by European law. Any transfer outside Europe would have to be justified in some other way.

The beleaguered head of PR has appeared on Morning Ireland attempting to extricate Irish Water from this quagmire - stating for example that Irish Water would only be direct marketing via postal inserts with bills, not by phone calls or emails. However her ad hoc assurances are meaningless while the data protection statement still claims much wider rights.

These are fundamental failures to meet basic requirements of data protection law and have already resulted in one change to the privacy statement. The Data Protection Commissioner is now also involved, and it is safe to say that her office will also insist on further changes. However it is astonishing that it is only at this late stage that the privacy issues involved are being given the attention which should have been there from the start.

For more see this excellent series of posts from Daragh O'Brien, who has been on top of the issue from the start: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10.