More laws fewer rights

by Margaret McKearney

The recent proposal by the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell for the introduction of increased surveillance and data retention schemes will evoke memories for those of us who remember the Cosgrave/Corish partnership of the mid 1970s. Not since the hey days of Cooney, Donegan and the Cruiser O’Brien has the rights of the citizens of this state been so threatened.

Michael McDowell and his department have for several months now been drafting a bill which will require the retention of detailed personal information on each citizen. Information detailing personal and business telephone calls, for land and mobile hand-sets, faxes and e-mails sent and received, and internet usage of each and every citizen will be stored in a giant database and retained for three years -a time period that exceeds that of other EU states.

The supposed raison d’être underlying this proposed legislation is the now familiar and catch-all Western excuse of September 11. To this imperative no objection will be tolerated. Daring to question the measures taken under cover of responding to 7/11 is to be automatically branded unpatriotic, or a friend of the Al’Quaeda. We now offer up our ports, we allow the constitution to be flagrantly violated by foreign armed troops, and we now intend to enact statutes that will grant the Garda Síochána unprecedented access to our intimate and personal details. Mr. McDowell, in an act of political brazenness, states that the information would only be accessed by the Garda if necessary. This rackety old excuse for authoritarian policing is twisting the trust of the argument to imply that if you haven’t done anything wrong you will have nothing to worry about. To those of us who lived through the framing of the Birmingham Six and Judith Ward, to mention just a few of the ‘stitch ups’ by neighbouring police forces, not to mention our own such as the Sallins Train Robbery and the more recent McBrearty scandals, this type of bland reassurance has a hollow and insincere ring to it.

In addition to the possible re-enactment of the violations of justice mentioned above, we must also be cognisant of the fact that this plethora of information is vulnerable to misuse by unscrupulous Garda for personal gain. Whilst in no way suggesting that the major portion of the force is anything but honourable professionals, we must also acknowledge that they are also open to human frailties. January 2003 saw the conviction of a Garda for paying for future sex with any available girl-child between the ages of seven and ten. What an appalling vista if this Garda had access to data regarding vulnerable children. Likewise, is insider information to be at the unfettered disposal of an instrument of the law wishing to make a killing in the financial stock markets. There are endless permutations of possible abuse of such an abundance and wealth of information. Indeed one can actually foresee a situation where those of criminal intent would actually actively seek positions within the Garda Síochána. An appalling consideration and even though extreme, it has been demonstrated in other jurisdictions that it is not outside the boundaries of plausibility.

The assault on personal freedom in the Republic is deep-running and ongoing. Legislation is now on the statute books that makes it an offence for a car driver not to able to show his/driving license to a garda when stopped. There is no obvious reason why this measure will improve road safety nor will it prevent petty theft. Car thieves will now be able to learn the identity of the legitimate owner by searching the victim’s car for the license inevitably left behind the sunshade or in the glove compartment in order to avoid the penalty points. It is hard not to feel that the real reason behind this new action is to force a majority of the population to carry photographic identification - an erosion of civil liberties that may well prove difficult to restore.

Nor does the list of repressive measures introduced by the coalition stop at this. An amendment to that long running affront to democracy - the Offences against the State Act - is now in place. This legislation is ostensibly intended to grant the state the same powers to deal with ‘foreign subversives’ as it has always felt necessary to deal with the home reared variety. As several observers have pointed out, this type of legislation would have forced the state to imprison Nelson Mandela, Jomo Kenyata or Mahatma Ghandi had they visited Ireland. Moreover, the obsequious toadying displayed by the government to the US military at Shannon airport leaves us with little confidence that the final decision as to whom may be detained will be taken in Dublin.

This state already has enormous powers at its disposal. Power to intern, detain, trial without jury and imprisonment on the suspicion of a Garda, to mention but a few already exist on the statutes. Other liberties are arbitrarily dispensed. Mental health legislation for example is too often used as a form of social containment. The Irish government has too, a less than exemplary record on civil liberties. It is currently lagging behind Northern Ireland of all places in establishing a functioning Human Rights Commission and this is something that they pledged to do in the Good Friday Agreement.

And don’t many of us recall the inelegant “ Irish solution to an Irish problem” pronouncement by Charles Haughey when he legislated to allow married couples a minor degree of choice in the area of family planning. Likewise our bail laws, written into the constitution appease the baying voices of the hang ‘em high brigade but do little to alleviate the social issues that cause the recurrent court appearances by many of our young.

There is a lot of truth in the assertion that historically Ireland has not had much of Human Rights and democracy. The average Irish citizen often has an ill defined concept of what freedoms are basic and undeniable. It is way past time to redress this deficit. Too often we have heard “you can’t do that” uttered for no other reason than an inherent and in-bred belief in our own inferiority. This is an issue that cannot be entrusted to the conscience of our individual politicians to rectify. We must develop an acute awareness of what a free citizen and a free society requires and insist that we will tolerate nothing less