Limit retention of phone records, says watchdog
A garda chief superintendent can currently access anyone's phone records for the last three years if he believes it is needed for a criminal investigation.
This new Traffic Data Bill was first proposed after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York. Its aim is to give the gardaí greater powers to track terrorists.
But Data Protection Commissioner Joe Meade believes billing records should only be retained for six months, and has made a fresh submission to Justice Minister Michael McDowell asking for such a reduction.
"If someone has paid their phone bill, I can see no reason for keeping the billing details for three years, because of the amount of profiling that can be done on them with this information," Mr Meade said.
Following Mr Meade's objections and a threat to take High Court action against the State for what he claimed was a breach of constitutional law, Minister McDowell set up a forum to take submissions on how the Traffic Data Bill should be framed.
The Irish business lobby and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties are opposed to the proposal to keep the three-year retention law, and to extend it to all e-mails people send or receive and internet web pages they visit.
Last year, Mr Meade was asked by a journalist to investigate a claim that her billing records had been released to the gardaí.
Under the current legislation, Eircom could not say whether or not they had supplied this information, and Mr Meade has no powers to get an answer to this question either.
His only powers are to determine whether or not the information had been given out under the correct procedures following an order from a garda chief superintendent.
Mr Meade said that his investigation revealed that the regulations had not been breached in the case of the journalist.
It is expected that Mr McDowell will publish the Traffic Data Bill before the end of the year.
But his spokesman said yesterday that no final decision had been made on what it would contain.
