From top: Today’s Irish Daily Mail, Det Supt Jim McGowan and Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan
Via today’s Irish Daily Mail:
A Garda team led by the Commissioner’s husband has been secretly ‘spying’ on water protesters, the Irish Daily Mail can reveal.
The special investigation unit – that operates under the codename Operation Mizen – has spent six months monitoring the protesters, compiling profiles and gathering intelligence on their whereabouts, according to sources.
By coincidence, the officer leading Operation Mizen is the same man pursuing criminal investigations against various members of the gardaí for allegedly leaking information to journalists.
Detective Superintendent Jim McGowan, the husband of Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan, heads the team of half a dozen officers tasked with closely monitoring the water protesters and gathering intelligence on their whereabouts.
The Mail understands that the investigating officers also closely monitor social media and track the organising of the water protests and its leaders.
Dossiers on many of the ‘ringleaders’ of the protests have been compiled….Operation Mizen is currently just Dublin-focused but it is expected to be upgraded to a national operation.
Good times.
Revealed: Garda Spy On Water Activists (The Irish Daily Mail, unavailable online)
This all conveniently helps to smear anti-water protesters, linking them to some dodgy unapproved activity. Cynically designed to scare off the middle-classes. The govt got very nervous last November when middle-class protesters joined the protests. They have worked hard in the intervening months to tie the anti-water protests to the poorer sections of the community and allege it to be linked to dissidents, etc.
Was information on this unit linked to the press (ironic or massively taking the p*iss at our expense, given that McGowan is leading the investigation into Garda leaks to journalists).
Jebus, this country needs a fu*cking purge.
Best way to purge is to flush… but it’ll cost ya!
Curious how the Mail just happens to get this story only a couple of days before the next national march.
Somebody wouldn’t be trying to scare people off by any chance?
This kind of banana republic craic is more likely to bring people out on the street, not less so.
My protest is simple non-payment.
People really underestimate just how powerful they are in numbers.
You are the stage that the leaders stand on. Remove that stage and they come down to your level.
It’s hardly ‘spying’ when these Right2Water idiots just make all their inane postings on FB public. They relish attention.
Because these Right to Water ‘idiots’ are the same – coming in here trying to stand up for what they believe in?
Cop on.
Not all water protesters are idiots. The ones who record videos of themselves attacking Gardaí, and then upload this footage to the Internet as evidence of “Garda brutality” are idiots, and I imagine that these are the people that are being investigated, as opposed to someone who just went to a few protests and held up a few placards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp1gWkxOud0
This is normal and appropriate. Police forces have always monitored extremist groups prone to law breaking whether they are environmentalists or freemen.
or bankers?
No not bankers, or anybody who’s rich & mates with the government. Just real law breakers like people who disagree with the government.
Yes, some of them are currently under investigation so there goes your argument.
water protestors are not ‘extremists’.
+1
And those who say they are have a hidden agenda.
The extremist ones are hence the term.
Jonotti.You display an extreme amount bitterness.
Most are not; some of the Éirigí ones most certainly are.
Under investigation after the fact, as opposed to being spied on before doing any wrong.
Big cavernous echo of a difference.
+1
The Labour Party’s pre-2011 policy and manifesto commitment is now ‘extremist’?
Extremely dishonest.
One sentence in their manifesto.
Not even a paragraph.
And let’ not even mention their ‘tesco’ leaflet. Traitors.
Jonotti is a troll.
Most likely under or unemployed and voicing what he thinks are the thoughts of those he is envious of.
Jonotti is either an idiot or a troll. not just based on this, but all his comments on BS.
Look at how many gardai are in place when the meters are being installed. why would it surprise anyone that there are a few keeping tabs on some of the protesters? its common sense. The report also says it’s six gardai, taking shift work, leave, European working time agreement in to account, this isn’t a large number at all.
Also, what is wrong with this being the commissioners husband. He wasn’t promoted by her. He had every right to work as he did before
It’s surprising as it’s political policing against protesters who, at worst, have engaged in civil disobedience. We’re a free country and a constitutional democracy, but this operation has all the appearance of a secret police force, right up to and including (again the appearance of) nepotism.
Modern police force in intelligence gathering shocker!
It’s not political policing for the gardaí to follow standard practice and video protests.
Gardai doing job shock story.
Eh, they always do this.
There’s a lot of well intentioned people invovled with the water protests.
But infortunatlye there are also the usual band of infiltrate & try to take over popular protest as a a kick start to the revolution types there as well.
You’re guilty of talking complete sense Dubloony. This type of correct analysis has no place on Broadsheet.
Shame on you.
That kind of thinking left BS at least a year and a half ago.
Mercille is always right.
The government are always trying to kill people.
We were always at war with Eurasia.
No danger the Guards would do their job and maybe put a bit of manners on those scumbags extorting money in Kimmage?? They are too busy being lapdogs for Fine Gael. They’re the first ones off crying about how tough their jobs are.
The classic moronic argument. They should be out catching robbers and murderers instead of policing my crimes.
you agree with the daily mail and then have the barefaced cheek to call someone else a moron?
I quote sources from one of the biggest broadsheets in the world.
try and favour quality over quantity lad.
“biggest broadsheets”
That means nothing in terms of credible sources Jonotti and simply displays your ignorance.
You’re not a smart person so stop pretending to be.
Pretending the mail is a reputable broadsheet is such an obvious troll yet you fell for it.
Your the idiot here.
wow, we’re all idiots for not recognising that you are a facetious @sshole? well, you really got us there. i’d say you really lighten up the journal’s comments section.
I may be wrong, but I think part of Jonotti’s point is that many commenters on BS consistently ridicule the Daily Mail as a reputable news source, yet, when they publish something which has an anti-water charges/ Gardaí slant, many commenters accept it as credible.
I’m afraid yes, you are wrong Zarathustra, that is rotide’s point.
Jonotti is referencing a popular newspaper with the largest number if online visitors in the world.
Some people are disgusted/delighted the Guards are failing/doing their duty and I and a few others are saying “how bloody predictable”.
I’m pro-meter myself. Charge people for watering their lawns and washing the patio and all that.
All I want to know is what we promised the IMF when we sold our soul…
Not surprised. Many on the protests believe the gardaí are monitoring them, their FB, etc.
If they didn’t I would think they were no good at their jobs. The real question is how much snooping they are doing? How much of the privacy of citizens is being undermined?
Again, the powers that be attempt to blacken the name of citizen’s exercised by unjust, unfair treatment. Again, no surprise given Fine Gael’s background and Labour traitorous capitulation to the neoliberal ideology. It is not just government parties interested in snuffing out this movement.
They do not know how to handle such a movement, they are trying to classify everyone, compartmentalize and denigrate people who have been assaulted by this ‘austerity’ regime.
Regardless of the outcome of the fight against this injustice, people across the country have become energised in way not seen in a lifetime. For that we should be thankful.
Austerity measures have lead to the closure of Garda stations all over the country. As recently as last night in Limerick a garda had to use his own car to get to a scene where a man died of a heart attack after his house was burgled. There is tonnes of anecdotal evidence of people reporting real crimes, and their claims not being investigated at all by Gardaí.
In contrast, if you look at the garda resources that are being pumped into minor Irish Water protests, and the security provided by gardaí forGMC Sierra’s meter installations, as well as over the top numbers of Gardaí taking part in dawn raids over the Joan Burton kidnap in Jobstown, it is very apparent where priorities lie.
You can say that the Gardaí have internally decided themselves that this is where the resources must go, but if you’re realistic about it, it’s pretty obvious that orders are coming from higher up.
+ 1
love how the IDM is a rag not fit to wipe ones arse with most of the time.
Highlighted and published as if it were a peer reviewed study when it suits the narrative though.
+2(-1)
Bad reporting is worse than no reporting
Extremists. Point proven and gardai absolutely vindicated.
http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/bomb-scare-at-minister-alan-kellys-office-leaves-staff-extremely-shaken-31485219.html
Do you really believe that was not a false flag stunt?
Oh hai Jim
The mistake people are making is that they think it is normal for a police force to monitor a democratic protest movement. It is NOT normal in a democracy with powers of separation. It is very likely to be unlawful.
What fresh lunacy is this? Of course it’s normal for a police force in a democracy to monitor protests and protest movements.
Well, he’s loves young dream, isn’t he?
The head on da fella.
If this is true then GSOC need to take action and a complaint needs to be taken
under the European Human Rights Commission about the rights of the citizen
to excecise their fundmental human rights to oppose injustice, what happened
to Fine Gael endorsment of the “Just Society” policy years back, theres no doubt
it Keeny and his cohorts need to be removed, as they are doing in a more subtle
way what Cosgrave tried with the Heavy Gang in the mid 70’s and Cosgraves father tried with Oriel House in the early 20’s.
Noreen O’Sullivan needs to gather up all the CCTV footage of todays march and
send them on to the district division’s to see if they can put names on faces, it will
give them one sobering reminder there are lot more of us than them and we will
abolish them….. their Pensions, Perks, Privelages and…..Water Tax.
The fools….fools…fools ….. the have learned nothing
The human right to throw bricks at police and stop tradesmen from working.
Tell me who threw the brick….you seem know or do you……?……Denis O’Brien a Tradesman really….?