First take-away: “The organisation never, at any time, gave any consideration to the lawfulness of recording telephone calls” #Fennelly
— ICCL (@ICCLtweet) April 6, 2017
An Garda Síochána had no common law authority to install and operate the systems, the report states.
By doing so it infringed the rights of personal privacy of those recorded and it follows that gardaí were not legally authoriesd to use the recorded information from non-emergency calls.
The Commission said there was no evidence of widespread abuse but said this could not be ruled out.
It also found gardaí had no intention, or did not deliberately, attempt to record calls between solicitors and clients.
Fennelly report highlights ‘total ignorance’ of recordings by senior gardaí (RTÉ)
Report of The Fennelly Commission
Well that’s a relief.
If something is unlawful is it illegal? LCD?
Total ignorance. Period.
I love the way they put this stuff out late in the evening on a thursday when everyone is only thinking about pints
sshhhh! not everyone is invited
Pintspintspintspintspintspintspintsmmmmmmmmmmmtasty
Rotters :-(
That’s enough about the gardaí and Coppers.
normally wouldn’t do this but if anyone is interested in reading a compendium of “certain matters relative to An Garda Siochana” over the years….Conor Lally has put one up on the IT @
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/garda-scandals-force-dogged-by-controversy-over-number-of-decades-1.3039241
many others (I’m sure we all know of other examples) maybe he’d break the internet if he wrote it all out but worth a scan thru anyways
Serious question///
Can a Garda make an initial caution over the phone?
On the radio this has been billed as absolutely excoriating! The sentence above seems mild indeed. Illegal recording of telephone call went on for years. Nobody knew it was being done ; nobody knew why it was being done ; nobody authorised it ; no accused was put in jeopardy and -in particular – all convictions are safe! In short, thirty years of illegal Garda phone tappings resulted in no harm to anybody, and in any case happened accidentally. Does that sound about right?
The whole electorate and judiciary were bugged by total accident, nobody to blame, move on now.. nothing to see here
They borrowed the phone taps from Tony Blair who bugged anyone with a voice in Northern Ireland..
Ah. The innocent days when we only knew about wholesale bugging.
Happier times :P
The guards didnt ever give consideration to the law.. what a shocker.
I think we would be surprised if anyone is surprised.
Ah well at least it only cost the €3.7m to make sure like
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/fennelly-and-ibrc-inquiries-to-cost-state-7-6m-1.2445313