Last-minute Government amendment seeks to muzzle DPC critics (Ireland)
iccl.ie
iccl.ie
This kind of nonsense is unconstitutional and reactionary. If the Irish government is serious about retaining its role as the gatekeeper in the transatlantic fibre then they'll have change course soon and increase the dismal credibility of the DPC.
A lot of this was hashed out in the recent past with regard to the blasphemy position, see e.g. ICCL's take here: https://www.iccl.ie/human-rights/vote-yes-freedom-speech/
I include below part of Article 40.6.1°: which I think is in conflict with the proposed amendment.
> The State guarantees liberty for the exercise of the following rights, subject to public order and morality: –
i The right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions.
The education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave import to the common good, the State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State.
The publication or utterance of seditious or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.
What is it with English Speaking countries and like the UK, US, Australia, now Ireland ?
If I understand DCP, this is suppose to prevent someone in Ireland from complaining how their personal data is used ? Seems English Speaking Countries are thinking of the dumbest laws in relation to tech.
Maybe I never hear about other countries tech laws due to where I live. Are laws like this and backdoor encryption laws being looked at in Germany, France, Nordic Countries ?
Of course the ICCL (Irish Council for Civil Liberties) aren't kicking up a fuss about thought crime, because they've been pretty much ideologically captured.
But hey, sure it's grand, we've always done it this way.
(She does not have cancer. We were able to determine this by going to Northern Ireland and availing of private consultations in the UK. But it's absurd that it was necessary to do this.)
Of course, we have an agent looking for houses in Utrecht for us now, so maybe I'm just trading one dysfunctional state for another. At least one with better bike infra, though!
If you'd like a good example, the vast majority of the politicians in power are landlords or land owners. In recent years we have seen massive inflation in property prices and rent. There's been an erosion of protections agaisnt homelessness, and large payouts for landlords.
Leo Varadkar when in power was caught in broad daylight committing corruption. Giving confidential documents to a friend who owned a health clinic. The criminal investigation was brushed under a rug.
There's hope with a new goverment, it would likely be quite left leaning and many parties involved would be socialist of some form. But to be fair there are massive problems socially with Ireland, same with the Netherlands and in turn a lot of other European states.
It's also redolent of the silly anti-abortion law passed in Texas that ultimately removed abortion rights in the US. Certainly on-brand for Ireland.
Texas can't outlaw things for the rest of the country. That's one of the greatest features in my opinion in the US, states are allowed to make their own laws and you can then see how it works out. Texas has no more power to ban abortion in the US than Poland has the ability to pasta in Italy.
It's been massively criticized because it's been dragging their feet when resolving complaints and having... strange... resolutions when they actually managed to resolve anything: https://www.irishtimes.com/technology/big-tech/2023/01/13/eu...
Now the Irish parliament accepted a surprise amendment which makes process of this office opaque and untransparent for everyone else - it's not hard what's going on here.
It's GDPR protection office refusing to be accountable for their slow GDPR resolution process in a country which wants to retain megacorporations that love to break said GDPR.
It's a totalitarian reaction to the internet. It used to be enough to wield control over the media in general to control the public, but that can't be done anymore. They have national security, hate speech, copyright and child pornography laws that they can try to replace that with, but they have to be forced through some sort of democratic process in the west that can lead to them being noticed. The last resort is training people to be brownshirts and pinkertons, but there's a reason brownshirts and pinkertons are sent into crowds with clubs - they're not too smart. It doesn't work on the internet.
There's a need to shore up speech laws, anti-encryption laws, and regulation on private speech platforms so they can simply jail or fine people into silence.
This isn't aimed at individuals. Individuals can be ignored and stonewalled without consequences, as most don't have a high-profile media presence nor funds to mount legal challenges. Nothing changes there.
This is aimed at a (few?) non-profit(s?) who have been publicly exposing the incompetence and suspected corruption/favoritism by the DPC and got decent media attention.
Not even at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems ?
If you can't control what people think, you just scare them into not speaking.
Sounds like state sponsored terrorism to me.