#Ireland needs this level of oversight and transparency into surveillance...Well, more actually but this is a start. It's madness that the UK of all places has more than we do at political and independent oversight levels.
Worth contrasting UK with Irish Reports. In UK you have teams of people involved in oversight, visiting monthly or weekly as necessary, all with skills to understand what they are looking at. In Ireland you have ONE judge visiting two or three times a year cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2015/05/…
In the UK reports it outlines special categories of information that is afforded extra protection. For example journalists, lawyers, health data. So in a healthy democracy people can make a judgement of whether the six examples of surveillance on journalists strikes a balance. 
The UK report also outlines decisions made to use juveniles as a CHIS (a source). Nothing particularly wrong about this but at the same time, the use of a non-adult is complex decision that should have enhanced oversight.
The IPCO is allowed examine and criticise strongly the lack of documentation by the Security Service of times when it has allowed it's sources to participate in criminality. Contrast this with the mess when Gardai have been found to let things like drug shipments through.
Policing and intelligence gathering obviously always requires tough decisions about when to allow criminality in order to keep a source in place, it's part of the process. Your not working with saints. However the point is that better independent oversight can and should be had.
Here again, the Security Service is held to account for usage of biometric data. Contrast with the fact that we have to read in international news outlets that the Garda are testing services which use mass surveillance of facial recognition. (ClearviewAI) buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…
Contrast the technical assessment of the IPCO with any of the reports by a single Irish judge. Here IPCO is specifically looking at technologies used and reprimanding the Security Service about the controls, access, copying and retaining. Nothing like this in the Irish reports.
Contractors working temporarily with UK services get more structured and regular vetting (CTC, SC, DV etc) than anyone working in a sensitive role in Ireland (Gardai, Dept of Taoiseach etc). UK takes counter-intelligence seriously. You can't protect Irish citizen data otherwise.
All throughout the IPCO report you see references in it to recent legal changes and concerns of the public. It's commendable to see in such a report how these are reflected quickly in how the IPCO investigates. There is no such responsiveness in the Irish reports.
Contrast oversight in relation to cases and records. Without these being accurate/difficult to manipulate (esp after fact), how can an independent accessor have trust in what they are seeing? One is a complex series of oversight steps, the Garda approach is give him a spreadsheet
You also have the ability of the IPCO to actually make recommendations about what it wants to see in future.
The IPCO delibrately writes its most important recommendations for all services in red. Here they outline issues about previous statistics which gave (possibly slightly confusingly, hence the change) an indication of when surveillance powers were being used incorrectly.
Look at all this transparency compared to Ireland. Text boxes and charts explaining to the public how and why intrusive activities by the state were used. Allowing citizens to make informed decisions on how much power and for what reason they should allow such activities.
Above point is important because in the UK, intrusive surveillance powers have been pushed downwards toward things like local authorities. Does Ireland want to be a country where a council could intercept your phone because you haven't paid property tax?
Let's not forget the Garda Commisioner recently coming out in favour of encryption backdoors, even though every cybersecurity person alive thinks this is a ridiculous idea at the technical level as you can't protect it.
independent.ie/business/techn…
independent.ie/business/techn…
But a) has there even been a police chief who doesn't want more powers? And b) we don't have anywhere near enough democratic oversight to grant such increased powers to the @gardainfo. Read a former Justice Ministers comment during @slandail_nssi on this
Oh and another former Justice Minister's comments about the Garda use of the PULSE system. thejournal.ie/alan-shatter-s…
Just imagine Dublin City Council, which can't seem to build bike lanes in a flat city without managing to get its citizens constantly run over, with the power to run covert sources or tap your phone and internet traffic.
De facto investigating and keeping an eye on the political aspect of such activities. Now there's an idea for a country that has had its fair share of scandals like tapping of journalists phones and selective leaking of covertly gathered information for political purposes.
Again, the IPCO isn't afraid to highlight shortcomings amongst senior decision-makers. We don't have that proper independent oversight within Ireland, especially at the political level.
An independent technology oversight panel that advises on and reports on how the state should utilise tools and methods to monitor its citizens. Not just a Garda Commisioner asking for more power. Would have been handy on many debates like the recent Public Services Card fiasco.
10 days to report a breach of compliance, self questioning about whether they can trust the agencies to report a breach and the right at times to inform the citizen affected by the state overstepping its powers. Contrast that with a single judge turning up two/three times a year.
Accountability and an admirable back and forth between civil society like @privacyint, intelligence agencies and independent oversight about mistakes/misuse of surveillance powers. How democratic compared to #Ireland.
Also explanations of why it happened. In this case it helps agencies gathering information because it highlights that most of the errors are mistakes rather than abuses.
Despite fears within agencies Ireland about oversight, the comparison between the errors and actual amount of genuine work they get done is telling. It's only a very small amount that are errors compared to the bigger picture. More oversight = more trust
Look at this for oversight. In one case a phone company mistake, no doubt lessons learned that will help investigations next time. In another an innocent persons rights violated by state surveillance powers by accident. They were told about it and have a recourse to action.
Vital to democracy is granting increased protection to certain professions. These statistics couldn't be more important to ensuring a balance of checks and balances with those holding surveillance power. (Not all investigations are of individuals but often people targeting them)
In the UK not a huge amount of money for increased transparency and trust in a country where a lot of that has been lost for many legitimate reasons. I'm ignoring the bulk authorisation issue and what that means ("Gimme all your XYZ users") for the moment as that's a wormhole.
Ultimately in Ireland we trust men and women in the Gardai and elsewhere to do difficult and dangerous jobs in order to protect our citizens, constitution and state - to do that, they need to gather information. In an increasingly uncertain world they may need to do more of that.
However they should not be put in a position where they can or should be allow rely totally on trust in such sensitive matters at any level of the chain from the Minister down. In the past that has failed too often. It cannot be allowed fail in an age of ClearviewAI.
We live in an age where right across Europe/US we have seen state security structures misused, abused or ignored for political purposes. It would be really nieve of us to think that trends elsewhere in the world would bypass us. The time to ensure this can't happen is now. #ENDS
