It was brought to my attention yesterday that the Sunday Times front page (reproduced as pdf here with permission) ran last week with the story that Gardai have been accessing the information held under Data Retention, without oversight, at a rate of 10,000 queries a year. When the measure was brought in, it was described as being intended to be used for investigating serious crime and terrorist offences.
This is an important story and it deserves the follow up interest given to it- from Brendan Howlin’s statement to Matt Cooper’s interview with Sean Ardagh TD and TJ McIntyre of DRI.
But Tuppenceworth readers might be forgiven for finding the story a little familiar- as we told you the same thing back on the 5th December.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a Scoop before.
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Fancy some chocolate sprinkles on that scoop?
Huzzah for the humble blogger.
And do you think you’ll get a credit? Will ya Gogarty!
Well, I’m not going to worry too much about that yet. For example, Karlin’s article in today’s Irish Times Business supplement draws heavily on my report of 5th December to address the Data Protection Commissioner’s stated position.
I wrote the thing for exactly that purpose- so that alert journalists could pick up what was said at a fairly obscure event (the one (Irish Times) reporter present had to go out and cover the story of a man being blown by the crazy wind into the Lee outside the hotel door) and bring it to a wider audience. So I’m just delighted that it’s coming out now.
If there are any journalists looking for similar hidden gems, I suggest they search our site from the sidebar for the word E-Voting for another unexploited set of questions.
Likewise, any journo looking for hidden gems about our electoral register (and the issues with the approach that has been taken to address it) might take a butchers at obriend.info/wordpress.. hasn’t been updated for a month or so but check under Electoral Information Quality.
Happeny place to the venerable Tupp’worth though.