Art, media, opinion and ideas
Like Fingerbobs, but made with facts, instead of digits. Factbob1: Speaking in UCC at the student Law Society Law Conference, Seamus Dooley of the NUJ conceeded that standards in newspapers have fallen in recent years. Factbob 2: At the same conference Gary Davis, the Deputy Data Protection Commissioner said that (a) Gardai were accessing telecommunications data at a rate of 10,000 requests a year.
I will be giving a small talk on the Digital Rights Ireland case at Barcamp on Saturday. I hope to briefly outline the basis for the case and then open the floor to questions. I think the quicker you can get to the questions stage of an explanatory talk, the more likely it is that people will hear something that they really wanted answered.
My alter ego at the McGarr Solicitors website has posted up an exchange relating to the Irish Government's relationship to the negotiations currently occuring in Geneva at the WIPO. These are aimed at to bringing about "A Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organisations".
For people looking for an introduction to one of the most pernicious aspects of Data Retention, The Midnight Court has posted what it promises will be the introduction to a series of essays on the consequences of Data Retention in law.
The Irish Times has an leader article today on Data Retention. A small extract:Perhaps because such legislation deals with electronic data, and the surveillance happens unseen in the background, it has not provoked significant public debate.
Some time ago, Karlin Lillington of the Irish Times linked to details of a secret Council of Ministers questionnaire. This was drawn up in advance of any data retention legislation being in place, in November 2002. It is interesting in its entirety, but I'd particularly draw people's attention to question 5 and the Irish Government's answer.
Digital Rights Ireland have sent letters to the Minister for Justice, the Minister for Communications and the Garda Commissioner looking for undertakings in relation to data retention. McGarr Solicitors represent DRI. I won't be commenting on the case beyond this.
MCD, promoters of the Oxygen festival, recently took umbridge at people discussing their perceptions of shortcomings in some aspects of the most recent Oxygen event. (see "How we feared for our lives at Oxegen . .
Colm MacCárthaigh gives an overview of the timeline of events surrounding the evoting fiasco. Here's an interesting snippit. We come in just as the Oireachtas has formed a committee to look into concerns about evoting.
I'm sure that the DRI people will be all over this, but I just thought that people might be interested to know that an objection to the Data Retention Directive was lodged today by the Irish Government with the European Court of Justice. Today was the last possible day to lodge such an objection. The contents of that objection aren't clear yet.
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