Originally Posted by Factorem

Exactly. The Gardai/Army have to be seen to be "moving with the times".

When it comes down to it, they haven't a clue and I wouldn't be surprised if there are back-handers and international junkets left right and centre.

Give the Air Corps a g-suit and they think their state-of-the-art. Give the Garda a semantic search engine and off-the-shelf voice recognition technology and they think they're working in a real-life episode of CSI Miami.

Originally Posted by asset test

Might be the keystone cops equipment failure or falling asleep listening to the eejits that will make this not work, but the THREAT of covert surveillance is enough to drive the crims a bit mad (madder than they are now)and that is worse than tailing someone. They'll never know when it is being done or not done. You can't carry a laptop into Limerick prison to Skype someone.

We have nothing to worry about, if we have done nothing to worry about. Behave yourselves and you'll be OK. So what's the worry about the cops tailing and taping criminals? I'm all for it, and if they get me in the net that would be so funny.

Originally Posted by asset test

We have nothing to worry about, if we have done nothing to worry about. Behave yourselves and you'll be OK. So what's the worry about the cops tailing and taping criminals? I'm all for it, and if they get me in the net that would be so funny.

Originally Posted by asset test

Might be the keystone cops equipment failure or falling asleep listening to the eejits that will make this not work, but the THREAT of covert surveillance is enough to drive the crims a bit mad (madder than they are now)and that is worse than tailing someone. They'll never know when it is being done or not done. You can't carry a laptop into Limerick prison to Skype someone.

We have nothing to worry about, if we have done nothing to worry about. Behave yourselves and you'll be OK. So what's the worry about the cops tailing and taping criminals? I'm all for it, and if they get me in the net that would be so funny.

Originally Posted by perprojustice

[/B]

There is a lot to worry about. Start with POLICE STATE

Originally Posted by Factorem

Under the Surveillance Bill, thousands and thousands of hours of conversations are to be bugged and listened in to, stored indefinitely, and searched through using state-of-the-art semantic search engines. It's like something out of an Orwell novel.

These kinds of laws only impinge on the right to privacy of law-abiding citizens. The scumbags in Limerick will find ways around the surveillance, whilst innocent people get picked out by the automated software systems and their private conversations are listened in on.

How will the speech recognition systems cope with the Limerick knacker accent? If the Moyross locals think their calls are being recorded and stored, they'll speak with even worse knacker accents so the automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems will go haywire. The gardai/army will need to put huge effort into training their systems to recognise Limerick/Dublin knackers and it's unlikely they have the expertise – i.e. it's the innocent people who speak normally are the ones who are going to end up being picked out for saying something slightly “out of the ordinary”. Also, if I'm picked up by one of these algorithms, how long are my private conversations going to be stored on some Garda computer?

Mary McAleese would want to grow a pair and send this bill back to the Supreme Court. I don't want to live in a parnoid surveillance state where everyone is looking over their shoulder all the time. She's made little impact sofar and this would be a chance for her to make some kind of a mark.

The Limerick knackers won't be long getting themselves 3G-enabled phones with a readily available encrypted chat/voice package installed. The Gardai/Army won't be able to do a thing about that unless they've got some quantum computer in the basement of Harcourt Street. Innocent people certainly won't be using counter-surveillance technology.

Then there's those laser microphones that are used by police forces all over the world. If you know the Gardai have the technology, it's not hard to protect yourself against their intrusion.