The Data Protection Commissioner has said he was opposed to a secret directive, issued last year, requiring telecommunications companies to retain communications traffic data for three years.
Speaking at the opening of the Forum on the Retention of Communications Traffic Data yesterday, Joe Meade, said former Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O'Rourke, issued a directive in April 2002, ordering phone companies to retain traffic data (information on phone calls and faxes) for three years.
The directive was confidential, and the three-year period was brought in to resolve a dispute between the operators and the Data Protection office. Previously, data was to be retained for six years.
The information is retained for the use of the defence forces and the gardaí, and the three-year figure is a stop-gap measure until substantive legislation is brought into effect.
'While I was very unhappy with this approach I am much happier that the process has now been brought into the open for public debate,' said Mr Meade.
Danger of misuse: Meade
Joe Meade told the forum at the Alexander Hotel in Dublin that if forthcoming legislation was not tight enough, the data could be misused by marketers, could lead to blackmail if it fell into the wrong hands, or could be used to monitor every citizen 'just in case they did wrong'.
He also said the legislation could be extended to include ISPs, in which case emails and web surfing could be monitored.
Necessary for crime detection: McDowell
Also addressing the forum, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said that he shared fears about the development of a 'Big Brother' state, but said the retention of data was important for the detection of terrorist activities and organised crime.
He cited the Omagh bombing case, where a prosecution against Dundalk publican was aided by phone records.
Assistant Garda Commissioner, Joe Egan, agreed that data had been important in the case of the Veronica Guerin murder, and stressed that gardaí could not access the data without a warrant from the Department of Justice.
The Council for Civil Liberties has warned against retaining data unnecessarily. 'If we are going to relinquish some aspects of people's privacy, we do need to have some hard, solid evidence it is necessary,' Mr Malachy Murphy told the Irish Times.
Joe Meade said that once privacy rights were relinquished, they were quite hard to recover.
