Heh. More at cleanternet.org (via TJ McIntyre)

Ok, so there are lots of links in this post, because of how active this topic is at the moment. To get a good view of what’s been happening, I think all are well worth a read.

Over the last few weeks there have been moves by IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association) to have certain sites on the Internet blocked by ISPs (Internet Service Providers), starting with Eircom. Letters have also been sent to Irish ISPs (as reported by Blacknight, who got a letter but isn’t an ISP). There’s an article on the Register about the content of the letter.  The first I saw of this being reported was in a front page story in the Sunday Business Post by Adrian Weckler.  Adrian puts it simply on his own site:

Irma is drawing up a list of websites it doesn’t like and Eircom will block them to all of its customers. And Irma is demanding that other ISPs do likewise, on pain of being sued. [as quoted by Digital Rights Ireland today]

It is a little disturbing that a lobby group representing commercial interests have the power to censor, if all ISPs comply, the Internet usage of an entire country.  IRMA will still need to go to court to get an order to block a site, and I wonder what threshold of copyright infringement makes it alright for a site to be censored? If one person views copyrighted material on a site, does this mean the site is no longer accessible to an entire country? Or 10 people?

Another question is, as Damien points out, what if a copyrighted news article is reproduced on a site such as Boards.ie, does this mean that it too will be added to the blacklist? A thread on the Enterprise Ireland Mailing list recently discussed a letter received by a business being pursued for €1200 by Getty Images for use of an unlicensed image on a website. In the future, will such cases of copyright infringement be resolved by having access to the website blocked to all Irish people? Were businesses within the country to feel the effects of this decision, there may be a different attitude to the path to copyright protection through mass censorship currently being walked.

BlackOut Ireland

There is a campaign being run by BlackOut Ireland in protest at these actions. There  are more details about what can be done to protest these decisions in their blog.  You will find them on Twitter at twitter.com/blackoutIreland ; you can track other related activity on Twitter by searching for #blackoutirl. Digital Rights Ireland also suggest sending a letter to Eamon Ryan, and they good enough to provide contact details for him at the end of their post.

All this comes in addition to the agreement that after 3 allegations of copyright infringement through illegal file-sharing, a user’s Internet connection can be disconnected. Again, Digital Rights Ireland have details of why they see this as a bad deal for users.

In response to  similar actions taken by the government in New Zealand, there were widespread protests to the enacting of a law that:

…calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th. [source].

The situation in New Zeland was also covered in a This Week in Tech podcast.

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• Maybe It’s Time To Cross Ireland Off “Places I’d Like To Live” [Bad Idea Jeans] (idolator.com)
• Luck ran out: Irish ISP agrees to music industry demands to selectively block access to Web sites (crunchgear.com)
• IRMA Threatens Irish ISPs (blacknight.com)

This is despite reports from an EU Barometer Survey that the majority of Irish people are concerned about the privacy of their personal data:

Over two thirds (67pc) of Irish people are concerned that their personal data is not being handled appropriately by organisations

As it turns out, they seem to have been right to be concerned. Reports on RTE (and here) have disclosed that the Bank of Ireland has lost 4 laptops containing sensitive information on 10,000 customers. None of the information was encrypted. The issue is now being investigated by the Data Protection Commissioner.

More from:

• Data Privacy: Three Cautionary Tales (from cearta.ie)
• Bank of Ireland: Do we look bovered at your data loss?, Damien Mulley

In recent weeks, Labour TD, Ruairi Quinn, revealed that over 100 laptops and desktop computers in Irish government departments have been lost or stolen during the past five years.

The full article is available at Silicon Republic: Laptop theft spate worse than being reported (7^th February, 2008).

Over the past number of years the topic of data retention has received relatively little attention in the mainstream Irish Media. With some exceptions, such as Irish Times journalist Karlin Lillington who has written frequently on the details and implications of the then proposed, and now in place, data retention laws, it has failed to capture public attention. It was recently reported that the next phase of the data retention policy, covering the storage of email and internet usage by everyone in Ireland, was coming into force. With the rise of Internet usage in Ireland, it is surprising that this issue has not been questioned by the general public.

The data retention policy to date has focused on the storage of telephone data. Specifically, the call details of mobile phone users, including the numbers dialled, duration of calls, and the location of the person when they made the call. This information is stored of a period of up to 18 months. With the introduction of the next phase of the policy, Internet Storage Providers (ISPs) are required to store details such as websites visited, details of emails sent and received (although not their content), details of Instant Messaging, VOIP (Internet Telephony like Skype) usage . This policy stems from an EU Data Retention Directive, originally proposed by four Governments, including Ireland’s.

There seems to be little understanding of what is covered by the data retention legislation. Even in situations where people have experience with technology (for example, some of the discussions on boards.ie), there seems to be misunderstandings of what the implications are. It could perhaps be likened to having someone follow you around and note down the details of any conversation that you have. They may also take not of anything you watch on Television, any music you listen to, and anything you look at in a shop. Having someone follow you like that would be seen as an intrusion by most, so the question remains, while the methods of observation have changed, is the result not the same?

The arguments for the need for data retention, of what will be vast amounts of information, relate to the need to prevent terrorism ( although given that the political situation in the North of Ireland has changed a great deal in recent years, the timing could be seen as being somewhat late). It has however been questioned (for example, by Digital Rights Ireland) whether the need for the 3 year storage period is necessary or useful in detecting or preventing crime. It has also been pointed out (for example, in articles by Karlin Lillington), that the legislation was brought in with a lack of debate by the former Minister for Justice Michael McDowell.

It could be argued that such a policy does not affect you if you have done nothing wrong, only the criminals should be concerned. While this is possibly true, the numerous failures to protect the privacy of individuals by Public Offices (see, for example Articles tagged Privacy on the DRI Website) make this a difficult position to accept. There have in the past been situations where public sector staff have sold information held on individuals. In the UK a disk containing private details of 25 million citizens was recently lost. While in theory, it is possible to protect the information held on people using a mixture of physical, procedural and legal safeguards, past performance does not inspire confidence.

Time will tell how the challenges to the Data Retention laws will result. What does seem clear however is that the issue needs to be brought further into the public arena. By doing so people can give thought to what expectations of privacy they hold and how much information are people comfortable with the state holding about them?

Further Information on this area is available from:

• Articles tagged as Privacy on Karlin Lillington’s blog (The comments on the post relating to Jan. 19^th‘s Irish Times article are an interesting read)
• Digital Rights Ireland
• The Irish Times (Subscription Required)
• My Del.icio.us Bookmarks with a privacy tag (http://del.icio.us/davkell/privacy)