Slashdot Mirror
Irish GSM Providers Asked to Track Users' Web Use
With the disclaimer "I'm both Irish and work for the EU Commission," reader VShael writes "The head of the Irish police force has requested that Irish cell phone providers (Vodafone, 02, Meteor, 3) retain detailed information on the web pages that people view over their handheld devices. This information would be held over for 'possible future criminal investigations', but would be gathered without a warrant, probable cause, or without the citizen being suspected of a crime. This request goes way beyond the European Union's data retention directive, which never included retention of web-based email. Representatives of Vodafone, O2 and 3 discussed the letter at a meeting with Mr Davis (6th November 2008) and questioned the legal basis under which they could retain this data. It is their understanding that the content of calls or e-mails, or details on webpages browsed, are excluded from the EU directive. As such, any retention or disclosure of that information would be a violation of existing EU data protection legislation."
It's a request, so they are free to ignore it.
"This information would be held over for 'possible future criminal investigations', but would be gathered without a warrant, probable cause, or without the citizen being suspected of a crime. "
Remember people the "world" isn't "the US". Warrants, probable cause, and presumption of innocence aren't universal.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Did this guy not get legal advice pointing out that what he's asking for is almost definitely illegal/unconstitutional?
While it may contravene several EU regulations, I don't think it would be unconstitutional in Ireland. The police in Ireland, the Garda Siochana, have a wide variety of powers that would astonish most people; for example, you can be convicted of a crime solely on the word of a senior Guard. Many of these powers date back to the troubles and before that the civil war, but theres no fuss about them because they are rarely if ever used, and then only to put away the "teflon dons", where evidence is difficult to gather.
I'm of two minds about the request. On the one hand, the Guards have already got enough power to screw over anyone they want, and they haven't done so. Ireland is still a very community based culture, everyone knows everyone else sort of thing, and word gets around quick. The Guards in my experience are a highly professional group of men and women who make a habit of nipping trouble in the bud. Yes, I'm sure lots of people will come in with horror stories now, but you'll have that.
On the other hand, I am very wary of requests for further far reaching powers for their own sake. I suspect this has something to do with the massive influx of eastern Europeans into Ireland over the last six years (the population of the country actually grew by 10%). While for the most part these are good people, they also brought with them some unpleasant baggage, in the form of the Russian mafia, who have been quietly flexing their muscles lately in the Dublin underworld. These types would not fall under the usual categories, and would be much harder to control, what with the language barrier for a start.
I'd like to hear both sides of the story before throwing any stones.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Well, I'm Irish and I work for the Irish Government (Civil Servant, minor role).
To my mind, it looks like that Garda Commissioner has tried to be very smart, but ended up looking very stupid. People on Slashdot probably don't know, but the Irish government decided recently to 'merge' the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) - the independent body that made sure noone, including the government and police, misused people's private data or were overly invasive - with a whole host of other, barely related organisations.
Thankfully, they were made climb down and back away from their original plans which looked - from an outsider's point of view - like they were using the 'merger' to scrap some of the more thorny Agencies that regularly complain about government policy and the police altogether. (When the Secretary General of the UN called to make 'observations' on the plan, I think they realised they had overstretched themselves a bit!)
However, they are still in a position where they can't lose too much face, and a 'merger' is still on the cards - except this time, it probably is a merger along the lines of sharing buildings and stationery orders. What the guard probably saw that the DPC was still on the cards for a merger without realising that is wasn't screwed over as badly as was initially intended. Or else he realised that he couldn't now just wait a year and then be able to force through his agenda without a State Agency that could effectively oppose him. Whatever the reason, he decided to rush in there to stick his oar into the operators.
He probably wasn't expecting the operators to go public, nor did he realise that the DPC is still operating effectively.
He deserves it, though. The Irish police (the 'guards') are notoriously weak on a technical level. They are so technophobic, they even call their computer people 'gits'! (Garda Information Technology section.)
As an example, many guards use Google or Yahoo email address as their official email addresses. Despite having set aside time and money for it years ago, most guards and, indeed, some police stations do not have email addresses. These free email addresses are used to communicate information about serious crimes, crime-scene photos etc. How's that for 'web-based email security'??? (For god's sake, nobody tell them about 'Flicker'!!!)
I also have occasion to know that many case records still exist only in the little black notebooks of individual guards. No such thing as entering a current investigation on a secure system or even having a typed version of ongoing case notes. This is after investing millions in a police system called 'PULSE'. This was supposed to be a secure system for recording all aspects of a case. You can't even upload a picture to the system, logs people out after five minutes of inactivity - even though it takes more then two minutes to log in and so on. It cost millions, yet the police still sometimes have to fall back to typewriters!
Even extends to basic tech like radios. A lot of them have to bring their own mobile phones to work. Either their radio system doesn't work in some areas or was never installed properly or their handsets have been broken and out of commission for a long time. And so on.
This, despite all our brilliant legislation about electronic signatures, eCommerce and so on.
(I'll also ad the disclaimer that this is not the area of the Service that I work in).
Concrete analysis...