Politics

By Gerard Cunningham. Late last year, the Irish Times reported exclusively on secret courts set up by justice minister Frances Fitzgerald to regulate requests for Irish data from the UK’s GCHQ. The courts were set up after files released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ was illegally tapping data on the internet pipes leaving Ireland, which travel through the UK. The new courts, established by statutory instrument, make it a crime to report that a company has been ordered to appear before the in camera courts. Exclusive is a much abused word in journalism, but for once it is accurate. A month after the story was broken by Karlin Lillington, no other newspaper or broadcaster has covered it. Privacy, and in particular online privacy, remains a little understood concept in the Irish media. While Irish journalists reminisced about CJ Haughey as RTé showed its three part series ‘Charlie’, their memories colouring their judgment of the politically ambitious but dramatically flawed programme, another Charlie made headlines in France. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks leaders, who linked arms in Paris days later in the name of free speech, announced in lockstep the need for increased surveillance of their citizens. Charlie Haughey accidentally invented Irish privacy rights in 1983. His justice minister didn’t object to the concept of tapping the phones of journalists – they were a security threat, the Boss said so – but after the affair became public as part of the year of GUBU, legal cases by Geraldine Kennedy and Bruce Arnold led the courts to outline a right to privacy. Technology has moved on from 1983, when many rural phones were still connected through manual exchanges and the Apple IIe and Commodore 64 were the height of computing sophistication. Not surprisingly, the law has struggled to keep up. In principle, surveillance of Irish citizens is governed by two laws. Data interception (telephone tapping) is regulated by the 1993 Interception of postal Packets and Telecommunications Messages (Regulation) Act, while the law on data retention comes under the 2003 Data Protection Act, with an annual report prepared by an independently appointed designated judge. These reports can be laughably brief, often amounting to a single page. In practice, a myriad other laws, governing everything from the coroners’ courts to the investigation of shipping accidents, give State agencies access to personal data. “The headline stuff is the 1993 Act for interception and the 2003 Act for data retention, but there is a bit question mark over how other powers could be used”, says TJ McIntyre, law lecturer and chairman of the independent civil liberties group, Digital Rights Ireland. “There’s tonnes of legislation that give powers to, not just the Gardaí but investigators in the department of agriculture, revenue commissioners and other state bodies, and the obvious concern is that these bodies may demand such documents as may be found, and obviously those powers can be used to get their hands on particular communications”. “There’s also the concern that the Garda or other state agencies might also be getting voluntary disclosure of some information, for example going to social-network sites and asking to see direct (private) messages between people, and perhaps even if they don’t have the power to compel disclosure, that site might be disclosing them anyway”. “US firms wouldn’t do that as, to the extent that their operations are based in the US, they would have to comply with US laws which are more stringent, and normally would insist on some sort of US process. But domestic firms: I would be a bit more worried about.” “To put this into context. There is a wider European arena, under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which is quite clear that when you have state surveillance systems, you should have certain safeguards in place. So if you don’t have a judge authorising access to information beforehand, you should have some sort of judicial oversight of the system as a whole, the systems have to be prescribed by law setting out when they can be used, what kind of crimes are being investigated and so on”. Digital Rights Ireland last year pursued Ireland to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), securing a judgment striking down Irish data-retention laws as excessive. The government, perhaps anticipating a successful challenge to its 2006 regulations on data retention, passed the Communications (Retention of Data) Act in 2011. McIntyre is unconvinced anything has changed as a result of the ECJ decision. “It would be disappointing if the telecoms companies had not approached the state to amend the practice in Ireland after the DRI decision, and I would be fairly confident they hadn’t”, he says. “The State’s position is that the 2011 Act is still in force and, while that is the case, everything is hunky dory, nothing to see here, nothing to worry about. And our position is no, the 2011 Act is unconstitutional and by continuing to keep its head in the sand the State is only storing up problems for the future”. “I think it is very likely you are going to see convictions quashed in the future because evidence was admitted when it shouldn’t have been admitted, when there was no statutory basis for it”. The Morris tribunal revealed two instances where confidential telephone data was obtained outside the regulatory framework. In the first instance telephone records were obtained by an officer in Garda HQ who phoned the GPO, where the then publicly-owned Telecom Eireann (now Eircom) was based, and asked the person who answered the phone for the records. He produced no warrant or authorisation, and the records were sent to him within a few days. The officer said this was the only time he had done this, as the records were needed urgently and he didn’t have time to process the paperwork, and that he did not recall the name of the person he spoke to in Telecom Eireann. In the second case, private investigator Billy Flynn was

By Peter Emerson. If you buy a house, you’ll have to maintain it. Any car will have to be insured. Jewellery is best kept in a safe deposit. Works of art also need to be protected. In other words, being rich can be costly… unless, that is, your wealth is in cash. For if you go to a bank with, oh, €10,000, and say please, please, please! look after this for me, it will cost you nothing; in fact, they’ll pay you! The two words, ‘ecology’ and ‘economy,’ both start with ‘eco’ meaning ‘house.’ The similarity ends there – the words mean the ‘study of’ and ‘management of’ respectively – and if something is ecological, it may well be aesthetic and wise… but uneconomic. Take, for example, a tree. A tree is beautiful, it certainly serves good purpose, but it is worth nothing, financially, until, that is, like wheat or barley, you cut it down. Here’s another example. If I go to work on my bicycle, I consume not, I pollute not, and if I manage to avoid all those car fumes, I keep fit. Such a selfish act, however, does not help the Gross Domestic Product, GDP, at all. If you, in contrast, go by car, then you consume, you pollute, and the GDP improves. Let us now take the logic one stage further: if, heaven forbid, you have an accident and wrap yourself round a lamppost, then you create employment for the ambulance crew and the insurance company and the police and the garage and the nurses and the lamppost factory and… in a nutshell, while you languish in hospital with your leg in traction, rest assured, you have prompted a healthy improvement in the GDP. What a crazy way to run an economy… and here’s another instance. The ecologist argues for more self-reliance. At home, for example, I grow my own spuds; then, every year, I put some aside to go to seed, and the rest, over time, go into the pot.  In other words, year on year, I am working (but getting no wage); harvesting (but getting no income); investing (without spending money); in a word, I’m being ecological. Economists do not measure these activities because they can’t: no money is involved. An economy based on debt For many countries in Africa and elsewhere, one pressing priority is self-sufficiency in food; a big part of the problem, therefore, is current fiscal policy, for the latter promotes dependency, the very opposite. Just to demonstrate the point, here in Ireland, most two-year old children know what a banana is, even though it comes from 3,000 miles away; but most 20-year-olds don’t know what a loganberry is, even though it is indigenous. We could grow loganberries, but we don’t; we can’t grow bananas, and we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on the multi-nationals concerned. We are independent politically, perhaps, but not economically, and not least because we’re in debt.  As are most countries.  Ireland, of course, has the bailout.  Things do not look good for Greece. The UK is up to its ears.  Despite its reserves, China is in serious trouble with its debt-based economy, and so it goes on: most developed and many developing economies are in the red; many former Soviet countries are struggling; and underdeveloped nations are even worse off.  So who’s in credit?  Well, a few countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Monaco are wallowing in the black (gold) but, on balance, the world is a debtor.  So who, I ask again, is the creditor?  Mars? Well, whenever a country is in trouble, it borrows from the bank.  If, later on, the bank gets into trouble, then the country, even though it is already in debt, might provide a rescue operation to the bank by borrowing money… from the bank.  Now admittedly, the first bank might not be the same as the second, but even so, they’re all lending to each other.  In short, it is, yet again, a crazy way to run the economy! Gambling or speculation At the moment, then, the world is in a mess.  And it’s getting worse.  The rich are getting even richer.  If you and I go to the races, then you might win a few bob and I might lose; but the day is zero-sum.  When the rich play games, however, they can’t lose: it’s win-win. They put their money in the bank, in yen perhaps, and it earns interest; they may take a gamble and switch it over to yuan, or dollars or whatever, but it still earns interest. Then, if the currency appreciates, they get a second prize. And the poor who aren’t even playing are the losers; the world, after all, is zero-sum. The bankers pretend it is not by using the phrase ‘wealth creation.’ Furthermore, when you are really really rich, you can begin to actually control the currencies. Taking £Xtrillion out of sterling causes a flutter; the price drops; the market begins to panic; and the price tumbles.  So now, via your various companies based in some off-shore tax haven like the Cayman Islands and operated by those nice people in HSBC in Geneva, you put your money back into sterling. As a result, confidence is restored; the price improves… and you make a fortune from your fortune so you go laughing all the way to the bank… where you are already. Even if such speculation is small its whole tendency is to achieve this effect – it’s the essence of the way markets work. Furthermore, if your timing is clever, the rise in the value of the currency means the political party you support will win that vital next election. This partly explains why, generally speaking, business tends to support not only the more right-wing parties, but also the current adversarial political system itself. On the scale writ small, in the board room for example, they might try to achieve a verbal consensus; when the going gets serious, however, as

Refreshing damaging public-sector reform, with renewal. By Rachel Mullen

Low incomes and poor energy efficiency. By Brendan Hennessy

Council tenants were done out of greenery and sports facilities by the Royal College of Surgeons. By Mannix Flynn

The UN mandates that businesses that promote anti-social agendas should lose the business of government agencies that promote the common good. By Shane Darcy

The second post-crisis election in 2016 can be expected to crystallise the shape of politics for a generation. By Eoin O’Malley