Big Brother is creeping up on you. New laws are turning Ireland into a surveillance society. Last February, the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act became law. It was changed at the last minute to give new powers to the State, as a result of which the government can now peer over our shoulders with impunity. It can monitor our phone calls and text messages. It can use our mobile phones to trace our movements.
A sensationalist line? I don’t think so. Certainly, the Irish Council of Civil Liberties (ICCL) believes we should be worried. In a statement, issued in response to the Criminal Justice Bill, it said: “This indiscriminate collection of data goes against a core principle of the rule of law – that citizens should have notice of the circumstances in which the State may conduct surveillance, so that they can regulate their behaviour to avoid unwanted intrusions”.
Five months on, in July, an extra section was, at the last minute, added to the Garda Act 2005, which allows police to install close-circuit cameras at any location they deem appropriate. However, no guidelines have been set, so that the powers of the Gardai in this regard would appear to be unfettered. In particular, there are no limits on how long footage may be retained.
If that wasn’t enough to make you feel uneasy, consider the definition of ‘terrorism’ contained in the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Bill. Terrorism, it says, consists of “intentional acts…committed with the aim of unduly compelling a Government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act”.
To say that this definition is broad is to put it mildly. It allows direct protest actions, like strikes, attempts to shut down roads or, for example, anti-war protests aimed at closing Shannon Airport, to be classified as terrorist acts.
Two further initiatives from the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, may well get the hairs standing up on the back of your neck. First, he signed an agreement with Washington, under which US law enforcers will be allowed to interrogate Irish citizens in Ireland. Then, he announced that, because Britain plans compulsory ID cards, they will inevitably become reality here.
Make no mistake, in the post 9/11 world, under the aegis of the ‘war against terror’, our civil liberties are coming increasingly under attack. New ‘anti-terror’ laws are destroying the rights and freedoms that we fought to obtain over the centuries.
Right to Interrogate
Reports of a deal allowing US agents to interrogate citizens on Irish soil surfaced recently in The Irish Examiner.
Michael McDowell dismissed the report, insisting that it was “a fabrication to say CIA agents would be able to question Irish citizens”. But is it?
Under the treaty, the US may indeed ask Irish authorities “to track down people in Ireland, transfer prisoners in Irish custody to the US and carry out searches and seize evidence on behalf of the US Government”. What’s more, the treaty also gives the US access to an Irish suspect’s confidential bank information. And finally, Article 8 of the treaty explicitly allows US officials to ask questions directly of a suspect here in Ireland.
To top it all, the Irish authorities must keep all of these activities covert, if requested to do so by the US – meaning that we might potentially become complicit in a US search and snatch operation, and the Government here would not be in a position to reveal their role in it.
Aisling Reidy, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, says that she is very concerned about the treaty. “What level of evidence will the US authorities have to come up with, to establish that someone is considered a suspect and is subject to investigation or arrest?” she asks. “Is it the level of evidence that allows people to be detained without charge for years, as in Guantanamo?”
An additional concern is the fact that the EU-US Agreement of 2003, which led to the controversial treaty, was negotiated in secret and that all related documents are “confidential”. Clearly the powers-that-be don’t want us to know what is going on.
The dreaded ID Cards
Only days after the London underground bombings, Irish government officials were claiming they had “no alternative” but to follow British plans for identity cards. Meanwhile, coming at it from a different angle entirely, Seamus Brennan, Minister for Social Welfare, has announced that his department will develop an ID card that can store data from a range of government agencies in order to combat welfare fraud.
However, this seems like an extraordinary way for the Department to spend the taxpayers’ money, given that claims made under a false identity are estimated at just 2.5% of all fraudulent claims. Why not sort out the other 97.5% first?
A campaign in Britain against the introduction of ID cards makes some interesting claims.
It says that the UK system will include individual checking and numbering of the population – marking many personal details (up to 51 categories, including fingerprints) as “registrable facts” to be disclosed and constantly updated.
The system, UK campaigners warn, offers a ready-made police-state tool for a future government less trustworthy than the current one. In practice, ID cards would provide a pretext for those in authority – public or private – to question individuals who stand out for reasons of personal appearance or demeanour.
Nowhere, critics of ID cards point out, has the presence of an identity card system been shown to significantly deter terrorist activity or reduce crime. Indeed, evidence shows that the existence of cards carrying personal data tends to increase, not reduce, the risk of fraud, identity theft and unfair treatment.
Derek Bond, an Englishman, was mistakenly jailed for three weeks because the FBI looked at his numbers, not his face.
“Canada proposed ID cards five years ago,” Aisling Reidy explains. “But they then undertook an international assessment, looking at case studies across Europe, which uses ID cards and in countries such as Australia, where there have been abortive attempts to introduce cards.”
Based on the evidence, the Canadians decided to dispense with any plans for ID cards. “It would be very worrying,” she says. “If Irish agencies were seeking to make the introduction of ID cards seem ‘inevitable’ so that people don’t even begin to question their introduction.”
War on terror is a war on civil liberties
One group in particular will be subject to greater restrictions under the new Criminal Justice and Garda laws: protestors. This is hardly surprising. Governments in the west have become increasingly intolerant of protest, with anti-terror laws introduced in the aftermath of September 11th being used as an opportunity to include protests in the definition of terrorist acts.
“Instead of addressing solutions, governments are playing the politics of fear with crime, terrorism and anti-social behaviour,” Aisling Reidy says. “After the London bombings, national security will be used as a smoke screen to convince people of the need for further measures.
“There is an attempt to silence dissent in general,” she adds. "Take for example the moves by Government to limit and question the legitimacy of campaigns to end homelessness or poverty or to challenge seriously flawed disability legislation. They claim to be fighting the war on terror, but if all they are doing is taking away our liberties then they are turning us into one of the states they are supposed to be opposing. They try to portray people on the left-liberal side of the debate as mad and soft – and you need the strong, hard right to stand up to terrorism.”
However, as Reidy explains, taking away civil liberties will not increase anyone’s security.
“Just look at Northern Ireland, South Africa, Israel and Palestine,” she says. “Broad, sweeping powers without safeguards have never solved threats to security or conflict.”
So compromised have civil rights become in the modern world of Bush and Blair that torture, increasingly, is regarded as a legitimate tool.
“The most terrifying of the whole attack on civil liberties is the acceptance now of torture being a legitimate tool,” Reidy agrees. “This was something that had been discredited and that became part of the accepted law of nations – and yet it is now considered acceptable on the basis of national security concerns.”
Similarly, the new British policy of shoot to kill threatens civil liberties.
“Unfortunately,” Aisling Reidy reflects, “it is only cases like Jean Carlos de Menezes (the Brazilian shot dead by London police) and the injustices meted out to the McBrearty’s in Donegal which stop people in their tracks. More than ever now, people need to speak up and not be silenced.”