Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald arriving at government buildings this morning.
Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald is to seek Cabinet approval today for new legislation to allow gardaí to intercept the emails and social media accounts of criminal suspects.
Ms Fitzgerald is expected to request consent to make a number of announcements in the area of organised crime.
The Minister for Justice is to update and expand two outstanding Acts to give the Garda new powers.
Under the proposed amendments, gardaí will be allowed to intercept the emails, social media and instant messages of suspected terrorists and organised criminals.
The proposed legislation will stretch to WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook and emails.
Frances Fitzgerald targets suspects’ social media, emails (Irish Times)
Louis writes:
Would you trust the Guards with these new powers to look at our emails, Facebook and what’s app? I suspect they’re already doing this. But of course, where do you draw the line and once given these powers they’re almost impossible to row back on.
Anyone?
Rollingnews
whatsapp is end to end encrypted – intercepting a message will be pointless unless they can get both shared keys from each phone.
iMessage – same as above
iCloud email – fully encrypted also, Apple cannot access emails or messages stored in your iCloud account on their servers.
Facebook, twitter, gmail, they would have to request access to your account from Facebook etc, this can and is already done for criminal activities.
Not sure on Android specific things, someone else may know. But the legislation in its current form looks completely technically inadequate.
Never allow a good crisis to go to waste when you can grab more power and erode peoples rights even further.
When you sign up for these services you give the companies and anyone who pays them rights to all your data. People don’t care about that but get upset that the elected government of the land might need access. You should be more worried that some guy in India on a few quid a day working for a facebook outsource company has access to your data.
I’ve never had a problem with this. I’ve absolutely nothing in my Facebook, email or texts that I would care about any authority reading. Others do I suppose, and so I can see their point that they’d rather have some privacy.
Same with Google snooping on my mails so that I get Ads that are more geared towards my lifestyle. Read away, guys, just don’t tell the girlfriend when I’m planning a surprise party for her!
@Jockey
What happens when some copper has a grudge against you? What happens when someone is doing a legal activity, that the authorities don’t like, such as organising a campaign against a government utility? They can abuse the power they have. The less power, the better.
That’s fine for you but there are plenty of people in the closet, undergoing a transition, hiding an addiction, undergoing treatment for a mental health condition or a thousand other things they plain don’t want other people knowing.
I too have “nothing to fear” but I still wouldn’t want someone to have access to the contents of my emails where I occasionally don’t contradict someone’s negative opinions of someone else just because I don’t really want an argument or the potted history of the stupid crap I’ve bought on amazon or Steam or god knows where.
Also, google doesn’t “snoop” on your emails. It detects keywords and presents adverts accordingly. It doesn’t understand or get context, it just sees you mentioning “cialis” and fires some adverts for that kind of thing your way.
“It doesn’t understand or get context”.
No, Google doesn’t. But if an individual gets access to those, that individual can understand it…
This was why I put in the sentence “Others do I suppose, and so I can see their point that they’d rather have some privacy.”
There’s nothing more than plans for nights out, holidays, work timetables, and summaries on how my day went. My own feeling is some hacker smarter than any authority could figure out a way of cracking into everything and revealing all. It might not happen, but the fact there is a risk of it is enough for me. So anything that I write in print I make sure there would be no impact if it was printed on the front of tomorrow’s newspaper, other than perhaps a ruined surprise party :)
I’m still human, I still need to converse on things I would deem as private between myself and my girlfriend or friends. But all of that is done in person.
Agree on the word “Snoop” – I meant it as per your description, but I see your point.
Adding to that, the keyword detection that Google does is the trade off you accept for using their free (but not really free) service. If you don’t want to accept it, use a private server or pay for the service.
This kind of attitude bothers me a bit. I appreciate that you personally have nothing to keep private but that’s not the point is it? It’s about erosion of privacy and rights.
If you had nothing to say would you give up your freedom of speech?
I hear you Dirmius, and I need to re-iterate that it is different in every scenario. For example there are friends and family that are separated by great distances that need to be able to have conversations in private without someone looking in on them. I suppose it’s nothing to do with authority abusing their power, it’s potential hackers abusing theirs. I know nothing about what is keeping me safe from my written words from becoming public someday, and so I have no trust in it, and so I don’t rely on it even now.
Absolutely thick comment from Jockey.
Send me your password to your facebook email and any other online services you have if your privacy means so little to you.
Do you tell everyone including strangers everything, IN DEPTH, about yourself? No. Thick. It’s arguments such as your that wither away our person freedom.
Hang on, this is simply one guy who doesn’t put anything “In depth” down in print. It’s not the correct medium for it in my opinion, amn’t I allowed to live my life like that, so long as I accept that others are different than me and I find that’s fair enough?
No, because it is being said in the context of new laws being introduced and the clear implication is that you are stating this as an argument that the laws are fine. You can weasel out of it and say that you never made that claim but in context you knew that was the implication of your comments.
+1
Yes, these laws are fine with me. However, I will rely on my original comment – I can see how it would be different for others and how they would prefer their privacy.
Well send on those passwords. You’ve nothing to worry about.
Also I’ll need to install cameras in your house or at least have full access to your home/work PC and phone whenever I feel the compulsion.
Don’t kid yourself, you’ve stuff you don’t want strangers to know on something digital you offer access to so freely.
Instead of focusing on how you personally or others use social media, perhaps think about the real meaning of what is under discussion, i.e. whether giving this kind of private access to authority is detrimental or beneficial. People are getting annoyed by your comment because you are basically saying ‘I don’t care about humanity’s right to privacy because it doesn’t affect me’. Ok fine, it doesn’t affect you, that’s established. The rest of us are talking about how this kind of power is potentially fundamentally wrong and open to abuse *regardless* of how it affects any individual, including you.
The issue is bigger than you.
Sorry, was offline for the day. Ok, I see your point. I was talking from the perspective of me, but I see where you’re coming from. An intelligent forum would and should discuss the effect it would have on the whole as opposed to the one. Fair point made and taken.
What if they use the access to your email to get the password for your accounts on websites like Amazon? Or to get other personal info that you might have sent like a PPS number or bank account info?
Then they would be breaking the law – and abusing their authority, and I would imagine there would be significant charges brought against them.
Are you simple?
Seriously?
What do you think all the security and privacy settings are for?
Surely we have a good enough independent Garda watchdog that would oversee this and bring to light any abuses of these new sweeping powers.
We don’t? Oh. Right so, then.
Are you allowed out on your ow
Bloody hell, along with your bank, numerous employers, multiple state agencies, why on earth would one give a flying f about the cops having one’s pps number? Amaxon, Google, apple, countless utility companies, netflix, sky, twc all have my account number.
If you’ve nothing to hide you should have no problem with this.
Then again, many people would rather conjure up conspiracy theories than think about who already has this information already.
Hell, folks give Facebook pictures of their kids and loved ones without thinking twice.
Why use a pseudonym Jockey?
the guards .. as in, the same guards who have been in scandal after scandal .. ah im sure it’ll be fine and not abused whatsoever.
Of course the powers are technically useless if the infrastructure is not open to the snooping in the first place, such as end-to-end encryption messaging systems like Whatsapp and iMessage.
But for those that *can* be opened, giving the power to the Gardai without judicial supervision means that it WILL BE abused. Are the Gardai obligated to provide you all the information they have collected about you? Data Protection anyone?
I have to agree….. until they sort the laughable ombudsman situation out, I’d be reluctant to agree to this.
You can’t police yourself and whilst I would never paint the guards all with the same brush and I wholeheartedly accept they don’t have an easy job; it’s a job with power and power and abuse, unfortunately, go hand in hand. Until there are proper controls in place to manage that, I’d not be rushing in giving them some more….
+1
With 250 unsolved gangland murders I suggest its just Frances balderdash. Ordinary joe soap would have expected an garda to have gone to a magistrate seeking a court order to access criminals social accounts if relevant to their murder investigation in the past. Its common sense.
250?
Do tell.
Department. of Justice does not even answer ordinary mail so I can’t see them responding to Emails etc.
The yanks are already intercepting anything and everything just on the off chance.
Possibly even this, so now they be scratching their backside wondering, what to do with all the information.
Information is fine but knowledge be better.
Writers living in free countries engage in self-censorship at levels resembling those in police states.
https://pen.org/global-chill
Detailed summary of why existing Irish surveillance law fails international human rights standards:
https://twitter.com/tjmcintyre/status/750234505735208960