In a potentially far-reaching legal challenge, a privacy rights watchdog group is demanding that the Government and Garda cease the collection, storing and accessing of mobile and fixed-line phone data, writes Karlin Lillington.
Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) has given the State seven days to comply, after which it will begin legal proceedings.
The ultimatum is contained in letters sent on Wednesday to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the Minister for Communications, the Marine and Natural Resources, and the Garda Commissioner, asking for undertakings that data retention legislation will cease to be implemented and enforced and requests for access to data will cease.
DRI said that it will seek injunctions against gathering, storing and accessing call data - which could mean that the Garda will not be able to legally access data in the course of criminal investigations.
Call data was used to gain convictions in the Veronica Guerin murder and Omagh bombing cases.
Under the State's data retention legislation, details - but not the content - of every phone, mobile and fax call is stored for three years.
This information includes a daily record of the physical location of mobile phone users and data on every number called, the time of the call and its duration.
Gardaí can access such data for any crime, including trivial misdemeanours. Although Minister for Justice Michael McDowell had promised that access to call data would be tightly controlled, access restrictions were never imposed, a situation repeatedly criticised by Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes.
An incoming EU directive will expand the range of information collected to include e-mail and internet usage data. Ireland already has the longest retention period for such data in Europe - three years. DRI says that such monitoring is a breach of Irish citizens' rights to privacy, as set out in the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, and as endorsed by the Irish courts, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.
"This is a complete reversal of the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty. This legislation is the first time we have seen any state impose mass surveillance on its population on the basis that at some point in the future someone might commit a crime," said T.J. McIntyre, University College Dublin law lecturer and chairman of DRI, which describes itself as a "body devoted to defending civil, human and legal rights in a digital age".
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said the Department is already challenging the EU directive - which would only allow the State to hold data for two and a half years, shorter than the Irish legislation. A spokeswomen for the Department of Communications said the letters had been received and it would respond in due course.