Category: data retention

Recent developments with traffic data retention – variously updated

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| Data Protection, data retention, ECJ

EyePhoneIn my post on the Communications (Retention of Data) (Amendment) Act 2022: ignore the warnings, legislate in haste, repent at leisure, I sketched how the Government came to enact Communications (Retention of Data) (Amendment) Act 2022 (also here) last Summer.

Since then, there have been several developments.

First, the 2022 Act was intended to buy the government some time to complete a thorough overhaul of the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 (also here). A Bill to that effect has been listed in every Legislation Programme since 2018. So, it is unsurprising that, on 19 April 2023, a Communications (Data, Retention and Disclosure) Bill, to consolidate and replace the 2011 Act, was listed in the Government’s Legislation Programme for the Summer Session 2023 (pdf). However, not only is that Bill not listed as a priority, but we are told simply that the Heads are still “in preparation” (p21).

Still? Still?? Since 2018??? (Indeed, even 2018 was slow, because the underlying Directive was struck down by the CJEU in 2014). Give me a break. Better still, give us all a break by publishing the Bill already!

Second, earlier this month, on 6 June 2023, Minister McEntee signed the Communications (Retention of Data) (Amendment) Act 2022 (Commencement) Order 2023 (SI No 287 of 2023) (also here) to bring most of the Act into effect on 26 June 2023.…

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The Communications (Retention of Data) (Amendment) Act 2022: ignore the warnings, legislate in haste, repent at leisure – variously updated

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| Data Protection, data retention, ECJ

Data Retention; via Dall-E 2; modifiedThe headline in the Irish Examiner is stark: “European Commission says Ireland’s new data law may be ‘inapplicable’.” Cianan Brennan reports that the European Commission “has dismissed Ireland’s new controversial data retention law as possibly ‘inapplicable and unenforceable’, as it was not submitted to the Commission before its enactment”. The legislation in question is the Communications (Retention of Data) (Amendment) Act 2022 (also here); and it was, as Brennan says, rushed through the Oireachtas last summer with minimal scrutiny.

It is worth pausing for a moment to see where the Act came from, and to consider why it was so rushed. The Department of Justice repeatedly failed to take the right path, even as it has had plenty of opportunity to do so. When it finally did something, it acted hastily; and it now seems that the hasty solution hasn’t worked.

The legal story starts on 27 March 2015, when Graham Dwyer was convicted of murdering Elaine O’Hara in 2012. Much of the evidence had been gathered pursuant to Section 6(1) of the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 (also here), which provides:

A member of the Garda Síochána not below the rank of chief superintendent may request a service provider to disclose to that member data retained by the service provider in accordance with section 3 where that member is satisfied that the data are required for—

(a) the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of a serious offence, …

That Act had been introduced to implement the Data Retention Directive (Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC (OJ 2006 L 105, 13.4.2006, p.…

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Taxing and woolly data retention laws will discourage new business – The Irish Times – Fri, Apr 15, 2011

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| data retention, General

KARLIN LILLINGTON

The cost and complexity of new data legislation creates difficulties for new investors

AS THE implications of our recently enacted data retention legislation sink in, internet service providers – defined broadly – are beginning to express concern.

The Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011, signed into law in January, does not merely target telecoms companies or conventional ISPs, say legal experts. Operators of cyber cafes, and any hotel or hostel that offers internet access to customers, are likely to fall under its remit.

Handlers of internet and e-mail data – including those who operate data warehouses – may now have obligations to store user data under this Act. Even people who run internet discussion boards fall into a grey area, depending on how they manage e-mail services for board members.

Data handlers must not only store, but maintain and manage data in such a way as to make it quickly accessible to law-enforcement agencies upon request and – in a move that has been questioned by privacy advocates such as Digital Rights Ireland – the Revenue service.

Doing so will generally involve software, employee and hardware costs. These could prove crippling to smaller service providers and cause hotels to question whether to offer internet access at all.

…

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Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?

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| data retention, Privacy

A cartoon for the week which saw both international data privacy day and the enactment of the Communications (Retention of Data) Act, 2011 (No 3 of 2011, not yet available on pdf, but see the Oireachtas site for the Bill; update: noted here by Rossa McMahon), via philosophyblog:

Privacy cartoon, via Philosophy blog

Woman behind shower curtain: Hey! What about my privacy?
Peeping eye: They say that people who worry about their privacy have something to hide …



Earlier posts of mine on this topic: The innocent have nothing to hide? | Traffic Data Retention, Irish-style, returns to the legislative agenda | Nothing to hide?…

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Beware of gullible politicos tinkering with data privacy – Karlin Lillington the in Irish Times

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| data retention, General, Privacy

Today is international data privacy day, and It’s a shame we do so little to mark the event

WITH THE Seanad passing the data retention – oops, communications – Bill without amendment last week, and Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes warning political parties on Monday that they are not to illegally use (again, for some) unsolicited text messages, calls or emails in the looming election, how ironically appropriate that today is International Data Privacy and Data Protection Day.

via irishtimes.com
…

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Setting tone from the Top | The DOBlog

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| data retention, General, Privacy

“Privacy by Design” is becoming the mantra of Data Protection enforcement world wide. Simply cutting and pasting a solution from another jurisdiction into an Irish or EU context invites breaches of legislation and failures of the required governance and controls. This is not just a technology issue.

Given that politicians are asking us to trust them, they should ensure that they take the necessary steps to earn that trust. Just like any other organisation embracing new technologies, they must ensure that the necessary due diligence and governance structures are in place to ensure that they are acting in compliance with long established legislation. If they are promoting a “tough on regulation” policy platform, then they must lead with a clear “tone from the top” of Compliance and good Governance.

via obriend.info
…

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Traffic Data Retention, Irish-style, returns to the legislative agenda

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| data retention, Digital Rights, ECHR, ECJ

AC Grayling book cover, via BloomsburyThe Communications (Retention of Data) Bill 2009, published last week, has caused a bit of a stir in this morning‘s newspapers. It will give effect to EU Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC of 15 March 2006 (blogged here) which recently survived challenge by the Irish Government in the European Court of Justice, and it will replace the radically misconceived and deeply flawed stop-gap Part 7 of the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act, 2005 (also here) (blogged here).

In essence, the Bill requires telecommunications companies, internet service providers, and the like, to retain data about communications (though not the content of the communications); phone and mobile traffic data have to be retained for 2 years; internet communications have to be retained for one year. This is better than it could have been, in that the Directive would have allowed 2 years for all traffic data; but it is a lot worse than the minimum of 6 months allowed by the Directive. This will impose significant costs on those obliged to retain and secure the data, and those costs will be passed on to their already hard-pressed customers. And it is likely to drive international telecommunications and internet companies to European states which have introduced far less demanding regimes.…

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The power of letters

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| Censorship, Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, data retention, Human Rights

Front page of today's Guardian, via the Guardian's siteShami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties), has an editorial letter published in today’s Guardian which begins:

Sir – 75 years ago today, in a Britain strained by economic crisis and social unrest, and in the long shadow of international conflict, the birth of the National Council for Civil Liberties was announced in a letter to this newspaper.

Little has changed. As is reported elsewhere in the same edition, students from the University College London Student Human Rights Programme, have prepared a report setting out the current assaults on liberty in the UK, under the suitably Orwellian title of The Abolition of Freedom Act 2009. It was prepared for this weekend’s forthcoming Convention on Modern Liberty (organised by the UK’s leading human rights campaigners, including Liberty and the Guardian) and it makes for chilling reading.

The situation is equally as grim in Ireland. Today’s Irish Times carries an article by Elaine Byrne on a forthcoming report prepared by her for Transparency International on serious shortcomings which have weakened the quality of Ireland’s democracy. The same edition carries an article on the financial costs associated with the forthcoming data retention regime being challenged by Digitial Rights Ireland.…

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