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.

Christ... Would you come out of the dream world and have a look at where you live. The last place on this planet that could ever manage to become your Orwellian nightmare is this country. We don't do law enforcement. We are ungovernable, unruly with an irresponsible electorate who elect incompetents to office. If we tried our hardest to become a police state it would look like a cross between Killnaskully and Blade Runner.

The surveillance systems would run overbudget by 50 gazillion. They would never be fully implemented. Reports on what should be done and who was to blame would pile up. The bits that were put into operation would be found to be completely inadequate. Legislation would be little more than a suggestion. Law enforcement would be looked upon as taking things a bit too far. Same..as...ever.

Just quit with the paranoid ramblings or move to some other country where there is at least some prospect of the state behind sufficiently organised to be able to actually pose a threat.

I wouldn't fully trust the gardai not to abuse this though. A superintendant can authorise bugging in an emergency. outside of dublin and limerick -where there regularly are genuine cases of emergency- i would worry that it could be used to harass. the gardai have form on this sort of carry on.

I think your missing the underlying point.....

I don't want the Garda listening into my conversations..... PERIOD

I don't give a crap about the Gangs in Limerick or Dublin. It's our Governments refusal to be innovative in their drug laws that has caused the drugs war to spiral out of control. If drugs were legal as has been suggested in other threads we wouldn't have the levels of crime we have and Veronica Guerin would probably be alive today.

The government are screwing with the rest of our lives because they haven't got the balls to do something meaningful.

Just speak Irish

I guarantee they won't create software that can pick up on it.

Still, the system does seem a bit OTT.

And I'd wonder how it stacks up as a return on cost. I remember seeing a UK survey that said that in terms of cutting crime, the best investment was simply to improve street lighting.

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This system is an abomination on humanity and our ever eroding freedom.

What if you have (non violent) anti government thoughts? Are they going to come along and dispose of the "terrorists"?

This system will also allow for mass brain washing. They only have to run trending applications on what they record to find out the collective thought and address it directly. This could be good, but it wont be... It is a disgusting system and should not be even considered. imho

This operation will consist of a pair of ball scratching, doughtnut eaters looking up property prices on the web in some office somewhere. They won't be listening to your conversation - period. At the moment people in telecoms could listen in, but for some reason that doesn't bother people at all. I suppose the whole 'this place is turning into a jackboot telecoms state' just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Leave while you can Locke - this thread isn't safe for sensible people with practical points.

I fully agree I fear this will be used to nail the small fry not the real scumbags that run the show. as for the drugs legalisation argument, I have got involved in it on numerous threads but reasoned debate and facts are not enough for some folks. politicians are both gutless and clueless on this- might lose a few votes. If teabags were banned today i guarantee you the boys in limerick would be shooting each other over them tomorrow. If the gardai were serious they should do a Donnie Brasco on the gangs - difficult in a small state I know but worth a try.

Hang on. Can you point out to us the section in the Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Bill that authorizes an Echelon/NSA-style mass-interception and analysis of private citizens’ communications?

I can see the bit about the Guards applying to the District Court for authorization of a specific intercept, but nothing about mass surveillance.

My main problem is with Section 14. It allows all evidence obtained by surveillance to be admitted as evidence in court, despite a failure by those carrying out the surveillance to comply with the restrictions of the legislation. Yes, there are requirements that the failure not prejudice the rights of the accused and that the agents of the state were acting in good faith and made a mistake inadvertently. Still, that's all pretty widely-worded and could conceivably allow for the admission of evidence against people not even mentioned in the application to the District Court for authorisation. Also, these powers are not restricted to any form of criminal investigation, and are also open to the Defence Forces and Revenue Commissioners.

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