Accountants and lawyers face having their offices and private homes bugged.

Run_to_da_hills

This is just one of the new powers that are contained in the recent wide ranged criminal Justice Surveillance bill introduced to combat gangland crime.

Accountants and lawyers face having their offices and homes bugged if gardaí suspect they are destroying financial records owned by their gangland clients or are creating false records on their behalf, it has emerged.

A Garda superintendent or higher and a Revenue official at principal officer rank or higher can sanction the planting of bugging devices for 72 hours in the offices of professionals, without the need for court approval, once they believe financial records are being destroyed or falsified.

I can see a lot lot of taps running and water wasted over this new bill.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0418/1224244975994.html

thebman

Ah yes genius really.

Taps running and introduce water charges.

Finally a tax on organised crime.

Carlow52

The overall thrust of this thread so far makes it more suitable for After hours.

The more serious issue is the inclusion of Section 1078

<<However, section 1078 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 is also covered by the Bill, meaning suspected breaches of it can be tackled via the new covert surveillance procedures.

That section of 1997 Act makes it an offence to deliberately return incorrect accounts or other tax records or to incite another person to do the same. It also deals with destroying or concealing records sought by Revenue officers.>>

Estate agents, pedophiles and property developers should also be included.

The real problem with this sort of stuff is that what ever is garnered does not have to be made public but can be used for 'general intelligence gathering' so it in effect gives carte blanche for wide-scale bugging.

Sponge Bob

Property Developers are the biggest -organised- criminal threat to the stability of the state and it is quite right that they and their 'advisors' be bugged and surveilled .

old boy

will it or wont it, dont hold your breath, they cannot deal with the illegal, how can they cope with the legal

Bob Z

i think its only fair....they have been bugging us for long enough:D

mumhaabu

Did Haughey try some stunt like this last time the country went tits up?

The Raven.

thebman wrote: »

Ah yes genius really.

Taps running and introduce water charges.

Finally a tax on organised crime.

Watergate :eek:!!

ynotdu

mumhaabu wrote: »

Did Haughey try some stunt like this last time the country went tits up?

good lord no! Charlie by executive order outlawed bugging of accountants/economists!;)

He went after the real crimanals :Bruce Arnold&Geraldine Kennedy!those two bastions of society(the highest ABC1 readership newspapers)in their freedom to abuse freedom of speech:) wh
oah betide anybody who questions a journalists motives or intergrity,drunken skunks most of them:)

Geraldine and Bruce got a tidy sum when Sean Doherty grassed Haughy up about the phonetapping on a late night talk show,

Charlie got lots of thanks a million big fella as well as grovelling letters from the banks who just weeks before his election as Taoiseach were threatening forclosure on him.

It,s a mad world,I would put most newspaper journalists on a par with most politicions,Corrupt,self serving,power hungry&greedy,just diffrient sides of the same coin!

Parasites who live off each other and have no conscience.

on the amoeba level i guess that leaves only the bankers!

ireland1italy0

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Accountants and lawyers face having their offices and homes bugged if gardaí suspect they are destroying financial records owned by their gangland clients or are creating false records on their behalf, it has emerged.

Can't get the bugging permission if the surveillance relates to matters likely to be privileged. Lawyer's need not worry; s.5(4).

Could change though.

Mr. Incognito

What about attorney client priviledge?

joolsveer

Wasn't CJH an accountant and a barrister?

Carlow52

ireland1italy0 wrote: »

Can't get the bugging permission if the surveillance relates to matters likely to be privileged. Lawyer's need not worry; s.5(4).

Could change though.

All very fine in theory:
1 when u bug an office u don't know what u will pick up, hence the privilege test is done after the material is collected so who decides that?

2: Privileged means that it cant be used in court, but nothing to stop it being used for general intelligence, ie will lead to other avenues of exploration and the original stuff collected by the bugging will never surface.

A similar issue arises with emails and other data stored by the fone companies for whatever period is set out in law. What is happening is that requests are being made for large tranches of data by various state agencies 'to help with their enquires' and the data remains in the 'open' files, which means it is kept for much longer than you think:)

prinz

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

This is just one of the new powers that are contained in the recent wide ranged criminal Justice Surveillance bill introduced to combat gangland crime.

Accountants and lawyers face having their offices and homes bugged if gardaí suspect they are destroying financial records owned by their gangland clients or are creating false records on their behalf, it has emerged.

A Garda superintendent or higher and a Revenue official at principal officer rank or higher can sanction the planting of bugging devices for 72 hours in the offices of professionals, without the need for court approval, once they believe financial records are being destroyed or falsified.

I can see a lot lot of taps running and water wasted over this new bill.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0418/1224244975994.html

I'm not engaged in any illegal activity so I couldn't care less what or who they listen to.