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)