Minister Shatter and Commissioner Callinan should both resign in disgrace

norrie rugger

Jimmy McNulty could not even keep his wire secret!!

My name is URL

Gardaí sought advice on disposing recordings four days before Taoiseach was told of tapes

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/garda%C3%AD-sought-advice-on-disposing-recordings-four-days-before-taoiseach-was-told-of-tapes-1.1739548

The Garda sought advice from the Data Protection Commissioner on how to dispose of illegally obtained recordings of phone calls from Garda stations four days before Taoiseach Enda Kenny was informed of the practice.

Mr Kenny told the Dáil on Tuesday that he was only informed on Sunday by Attorney General Máire Whelan of the widespread use of recordings and its attendant implications.

However, following a query from The Irish Times yesterday, the office of Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes confirmed that it was contacted by the Garda Síochána on Wednesday March 19th in order to seek advice on the disposal of the recordings.

In response to further queries, the spokeswoman for Mr Hawkes said he had not issued any instruction to delete personal data in this case.

That's a blatant lie. Hawkes was on Today FM a few days ago and said that he had advised Gardai to 'delete the information'.

http://player.todayfm.com/player/podcasts/The_Last_Word_with_Matt_Cooper/The_Last_Word_with_Matt_Cooper/12995/0/billy_hawkes_gardai_unaware_of_recordings

^^ 2 minutes in. He said it.. numerous times!

Muahahaha

aloyisious wrote: »

Having just listened to the VB show and what one of his guests said/intimated, I'm wondering now if there is any import to the fact that after the AG phones Enda on Sunday and tell's him she want's to talk to him, and he say's Ok, that she tell's him she didn't want to tell him what it is about over the phone.

Enda told the Dail on Wednesday that was what the AG said to him on Sunday, when she contacted him to arrange a meeting. The meeting (when it took place) seem's to have been for her to tell him about the Gardai bugging phones without warrant. The next day (Monday) Enda get's the Secretary General of the D of J visit Commissioner Callinan, which is followed on Tuesday by Comm Callinan leaving office suddenly.

Was Enda sending out a signal to all the TD's in the Dail that the AG didn't trust the safety of her phone, or was he unaware of how his statement could be misinterpreted?

That's a very good point. If the Attorney General thought her phone was bugged then we really are back to the Haughey days. I can see her logic in the light of GSOC being allegedly bugged by "government level technology", after that scandal broke the AG would have been aware that the likely reason for the bugging was GSOCs investigation of the Boylan case, where Gardai near the border in Louth were letting a drug dealer import heroin to Greenore port carte blanche so long as he distributed some of it to local dealers and informed the Gardai where the dealers were so they could pick them up and charge them with possession and intent to supply. It's almost an exact replica of the Donegal case in that the Gardai were organising for crime to happen so they could then go and 'clean it up' and get promotions to detectives without having to do the hard yards. Except in Donegal the Gardai were planting guns and bombs and saying their investigative work had found an IRA arms dump. At least no-one got hurt. But in Louth millions of euro worth of heroin was allowed to be imported with Gardai approval, which is essentially aiding the destruction of the lives of addicts and their families. The Louth case is even more damning on the Gardai than the Donegal one in that it caused members of the public to suffer because of the corruption of the Gardai involved.

Anyway I think it is fair to say that the Attorney General realises that she has all the files in relation to the Ian Bailey case and it seems now Bailey is suing the state and part of the discovery process has revealed that there were secret tapes made by Gardai between him and his solicitor, which is a very serious matter. So the AG figures to herself 'well if Callinan is bugging GSOC over the Boylan affair then what's to say he's not bugging the AG over the Bailey affair?' It's not a wild stretch of the imagination by any means. In fact I'd even go as far to say that the civil service in the Dept of Justice and Defence were also wondering if they were being bugged in light of the GSOC bugging scandal.

It is also interesting to note that last October when the NSA bugging scandal hit its peak with the revelation that the US had bugged the phone of Angela Merkel and 70 other prominent European leaders and decisions makers the Irish media asked Enda Kenny if he thought the NSA were bugging him. Enda's reply at the time was 'I treat all my calls as if they're being listened to'. At the time he said it with a smile on but I remember thinking at the time what a remarkable and blasé response it was to a serious breach of your privacy Maybe there was something more to it? Why would the leader of the country say he always treats his calls as if someone is taping them ?

Surely if you are leading a country you'd make dam sure that you weren't being bugged and would get an external counter surveillance company (like GSOC did) to make sure your phone wasn't being tapped ? On top of that if Enda is going around with the attitude that he is being bugged and that there is nothing he can do about it then he is either a dimwit or a weak leader, or both in equal measure.

aloyisious

Smiling, the military in DOD are responsible for it's security, as distinct from the D of J and the AG's offices who (I think) rely on another agency.

Similarly I had to laugh at Mike Noonan's reply re Alan and the letter on Prime Time "Alan was in Mexico" and how separately some-one asked did Mexico not have phone facilities to make/take calls to/from Ireland, I got to thinking that there was no need to worry about AGS monitoring the call - the US would do it from over the border anyway.

raymon

Fianna Fail should come out immediately and make a statement on what Dermot Ahern and John o Donohoe knew. Did Ahern sign off on the new digital bugging equipment in 2008?

Sierra Oscar

raymon wrote: »

Fianna Fail should come out immediately and make a statement on what Dermot Ahern and John o Donohoe knew. Did Ahern sign off on the new digital bugging equipment in 2008?

What are you talking about?

I think it is becoming very clear that ministers have been kept in the dark about what exactly has been going on in An Garda Síochána for quite some time now, and we would never have known about the recent revelations if the Taoiseach had not blown a lid on the whole thing at the start of the week. If people read between the lines they will probably come to the conclusion that moves were afoot to have a different outcome to all of this. The question is, was the government kept in the dark by top officials in various departments until recent days or did they know about it before Sunday?

The two people you are referring to are private citizens now, but I am sure they will clarify things over the coming days anyway.

Stop trying to divert attention to the scandal that is unfolding before your eyes.

Red Nissan

Muahahaha wrote: »

On top of that if Enda is going around with the attitude that he is being bugged and that there is nothing he can do about it then he is either a dimwit or a weak leader, or both in equal measure.

The more bugs the better, if you think you are being bugged, you try to use those bugs to distribute disinformation whilst making sure you don't reveal any thing secret of your own.

And one has deniable plausibility if everyone is bugged.

norrie rugger

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

The two people you are referring to are private citizens now

That would not absolve them of responsibility.

Did they know or not? I think that is a valid question as it will show if it were government sanctioned or a rouge operation

Sierra Oscar

norrie rugger wrote: »

That would not absolve them of responsibility.

And if you quoted me in full you would have seen that I would be very surprised if they did not clarify things - but FF cannot compel them to do so.

This will (or at least definitely should be) included in the commission of inquiry, and that should clarify things.

raymon

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

What are you talking about?

I think it is becoming very clear that ministers have been kept in the dark about what exactly has been going on in An Garda Síochána for quite some time now, and we would never have known about the recent revelations if the Taoiseach had not blown a lid on the whole thing at the start of the week. If people read between the lines they will probably come to the conclusion that moves were afoot to have a different outcome to all of this. The question is, was the government kept in the dark by top officials in various departments until recent days or did they know about it before Sunday?

The two people you are referring to are private citizens now, but I am sure they will clarify things over the coming days anyway.

Stop trying to divert attention to the scandal that is unfolding before your eyes.

It's a simple question. Did Dermot Ahern sanction the bugging or not ???

Muahahaha

From Broadsheet.ie , full list of Garda stations involved in bugging telephone calls, 2500 hours of tapes from these stations are on digital file. Given that most phone calls to Garda stations would be quite short in duration 2500 hours is hell of a lot of calls.

The latest list of Garda stations where calls were recorded, comprising the 2,500 tapes stored at Garda HQ in Phoenix Park, Dublin..

Anglesea St, Cork City
Ballymun, Dublin
Blanchardstown, Dublin
Bray, Co Wicklow
Crumlin, Dublin
Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin
Drogheda, Co Louth
Bandon, Co Cork
Castlebar, Co Mayo
Ennis, Co Clare
Fermoy, Co Cork
Henry St, Limerick
Letterkenny, Co Donegal
Mill St, Galway
Monaghan
Mullingar, Co Westmeath
Nass, Co Kildare
Pearse Street, Dublin
Portlaoise, Co Laois
Roscommon,
Sligo
Store Street, Dublin
Thurles, Co Tipperary
Tralee, Co Kerry
Waterford
Wexford

fr3d12

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

What are you talking about?

I think it is becoming very clear that ministers have been kept in the dark about what exactly has been going on in An Garda Síochána for quite some time now, and we would never have known about the recent revelations if the Taoiseach had not blown a lid on the whole thing at the start of the week. If people read between the lines they will probably come to the conclusion that moves were afoot to try and have a different outcome for all of this than the one we got on Tuesday.

The two people you are referring to are private citizens now, but I am sure they will clarify things over the coming days anyway.

Stop trying to divert attention to the scandal that is unfolding before your eyes.

I think his point is valid because bugging equipment was purchased in 2008 it had to signed off on by someone and also would have been part of the budget.
The relationship between Shatter and Callinan is proof that MoJ's are not kept in the dark about things so who knows what O'Donoghue and Ahern were aware of.
I do agree with you though that when it became apparent to the Govt. that this couldn't be buried on legal grounds they had to act fast.
Every Taoiseach, MoJ and Commissioner that have been in power since this began 30 years ago or whatever has questions to answer and regardless of whether they are now private citizens or not.

John Dundon has already instructed his solicitor to look into his case and It would be safe to bet that hundreds of other convicted murderers and rapists have done the same thing.
It's unbelievable to think that any Commissioner/MoJ/Govt. regardless of what decade would engage in such practices given the consequences but they were and now what we are heading for more costly tribunals and litigation against the state not to mention the unthinkable that serious criminals could possibly walk free because of it.
It's going to be the same old story as before, it will take years and no one that committed or presided over any wrong doing will be brought to account for it.
We've come to the point now where AGS has to be disbanded over the next few years and started anew like they did in NI, only way to cut out the rotten culture that is so endemic within AGS.

Muahahaha

Now it turns out the Gardai asked the Data Protection Commissioner how they should go about destroying all the evidence last Wednesday

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/garda%C3%AD-sought-advice-on-disposing-recordings-four-days-before-taoiseach-was-told-of-tapes-1.1739548

Muahahaha

And part of a Dail debate from 2001 when Alan Shatter was tacking the then Minister for Justice John O'Donoghue.

From broadsheet.ie

[IMG]Http://cf.broadsheet.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/shatt2.jpg[/IMG]

So Shatter was fully aware that Gardai were bugging telephone lines in 2001 when in opposition. But when he becomes the Minister for Justice and phone bugging is revealed on his watch suddenly he was unaware of it ?

I especially love the bit where Shatter says "This is a scandal of enormous proportions about which the Minister has done nothing since taking office"

Roll on 13 years and that exact same statement describes perfectly the actions of the person who uttered it back in 2001.

He has to resign. There is no where to turn for him. He knew full well they Gardai were bugging stations back in 2001 but has selective memory about it now. Each and every lie he tells is covered up by an even bigger lie and at this stage no-one, not the public, not his cabinet colleagues or the civil servants he works with, can believe a word that comes out of his mouth. The truth and Alan Shatter are uncomfortable bedfellows.

raymon

Muahahaha wrote: »

And part of a Dail debate from 2001 when Alan Shatter was tacking the then Minister for Justice John O'Donoghue

From broadsheet.ie

[IMG]Http://cf.broadsheet.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/shatt2.jpg[/IMG]

O Donoghue must have known.

fr3d12

One would think that when Shatter was so outraged in 2001 it would have been one of the first things he looked into after taking office in 2011.

hatrickpatrick

Sorry to draw us off the main agenda here but did anyone see John Mooney on Vincent Browne last night? He made a very big deal of the Taoiseach's remark about the Attorney General not wanting to discuss this matter on the phone, and made a thinly veiled suggestion that he'd have a revelation along those lines in Sunday's paper.
Bit of hyperbole to sell papers or the beginning of yet another scandal?

Sierra Oscar

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

He made a very big deal of the Taoiseach's remark about the Attorney General not wanting to discuss this matter on the phone, and made a thinly veiled suggestion that he'd have a revelation along those lines in Sunday's paper.

Indeed. If it emerged that the communications coming in and out of the Attorney General's office were being monitored, then that would be a startling revelation. It would suggest that certain elements in our security forces are out of control and out of the reach of accountability from our government.

It certainly would bring the GSOC bugging allegations back into focus.

aloyisious

On Drive-time: the monitoring system was supplied by way of public tender, with all the requested capabilities of it listed in the public advertisement, plus the programme reports that the Comm was advised by a senior DOJ official NOT to withdraw his "disgusting" comment.

Edit: the more I hear of this, the more I come to think it would be a great script for a (farce) musical, even better than the banking (let's go down tot he central bank swinging our arms) scandal script.

sopretty

Is it common practise for phonecalls out of prisons to solicitors to be bugged also? Is is legal?

Happyman42

Muahahaha wrote: »

From Broadsheet.ie , full list of Garda stations involved in bugging telephone calls, 2500 hours of tapes from these stations are on digital file. Given that most phone calls to Garda stations would be quite short in duration 2500 hours is hell of a lot of calls.

Henry St, Limerick

Can they put the WIllie O'Dea tapes up on youtube and delete everything else...is that too much to ask?

raymon

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

It certainly would bring the GSOC bugging allegations back into focus.

You might want to ask Dermot Ahern about this too.
Should be able to rule him out with a quick phone call.

aloyisious

sopretty wrote: »

Is it common practise for phonecalls out of prisons to solicitors to be bugged also? Is is legal?

It might depend who dial's the phone number, re certainty that the prisoner is actually phoning/speaking to a solicitor about legal defence matters. The prison service is allowed censor prisoner contacts for the maintainance of prison discipline and good regulation (or summat like that). Ditto for written outgoing and incoming post. EDIT:not bugged but made clear to prisoner that his phonecalls are intended for legal purposes only, and not meant to be used to break laws, or prison regulations existing under statute law.

Sierra Oscar

raymon wrote: »

You might want to ask Dermot Ahern about this too.
Should be able to rule him out with a quick phone call.

What is it you are suggesting raymon?

My name is URL

sopretty wrote: »

Is it common practise for phonecalls out of prisons to solicitors to be bugged also? Is is legal?

I don't know if it would be in the same category tbh. There's a Q&A on Broadsheet.ie which answers a few questions about why exactly recording calls between suspects and their solicitors is unlawful.

Broadsheet: “How does the bugging make the detention unlawful?”


LCD: “Well, according to the Supreme Court in the People (DPP) v Buck [2002] 2 IR 268 detention of an accused for questioning automatically becomes unlawful whenever that accused is denied his constitutional right to a solicitor, though if the right is restored later on in the detention, the detention becomes lawful again.
Statements made during the period of unlawful detention are automatically inadmissible; where the detention subsequently becomes lawful, the statements may still be inadmissible if they can be shown to have been obtained as a result of information elicited while he was unlawfully detained.
This was applied in O’Brien v DPP [2005] IESC 29 in which statements made by a the detainee when he was being denied his right to legal advice were held to be inadmissible, whilst incriminating statements made later on, after legal advice had been given, were admitted on the basis that there was no causative link between them and the earlier unlawful detention.”


Broadsheet: “But is bugging an accused’s phone conversation with his solicitor the same as denying his constitutional right to legal advice?”


LCD: “Yes, because the right to legal advice means the right to private legal advice. In Director of Public Prosecutions v. Finnegan (unreported) 15th July 1997, an accused had had access to a solicitor, but subsequently in the course of being questioned he requested a telephone conversation with the solicitor. This conversation took place in the hearing of one or more members of the gardaí. It was held by Barrington J, delivering the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal, that evidence of the interview which subsequently took place was inadmissible. At page 42 of the judgment he said:


“Even though the right to make a telephone call to a solicitor may not be, per se, a constitutional right, once the telephone call is allowed, the detainee has a constitutional right to make that call in private."

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2014/03/27/your-garda-bugging-legal-questions-answered/

To be fair, we don't know exactly what calls were recorded and there is nothing to suggest that some section of AGS has been listening to all phone calls in and out of certain garda stations.

I know all defence solicitors will jump on this, as a chance to get their client off on a technicality.
I'm not sure this would happen though.

It would have to be shown that some member of AGS listened to a conversation between a prisoner and his solicitor, and somehow used whatever was said to construct the case against the prisoner.
This would be extremely hard to do.

The only time these calls have been used in evidence was when the state prosecuted gardai for assault in Waterford. They were aware that these were illegal recordings but tried to use them anyway.

They have clearly never been used in any other case against any defendant.

I certainly never heard anything of these recordings before Enda made his announcement.

raymon

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

What is it you are suggesting raymon?

I would like to know what bugging equipment Dermot Ahern sanctioned when he was Justice minister.

Maybe the answer is that he didn't sanction any.

He needs to speak up.

A quick statement would clear it up.

rodento

Nice err spin on it

Shatter officials deny telling Callinan not to withdraw ‘disgusting’ remark

http://www.thejournal.ie/alan-shatter-martin-callinan-2-1384898-Mar2014/

but the statement said that ongoing discussions about this issue were “unfortunately, overtaken by events”.

Sierra Oscar

IRA trial to go ahead after court hears evidence of garda recording system

This case seems to have shed some more light on the system that was being used.

Supt Flynn agreed with Ms Burns that neither the stations at Clonmel nor Cahir were mentioned on this tender and he had concluded that neither station had recording facilities in situ.

He agreed with Counsel for Mr McMahon, Ms Isobel Kennedy SC, that the tender to upgrade the system was from 2008 and it indicated the only stations recording were the divisional headquarters, Command and Control in Garda Headquarters and Standby Control in Harcourt Square.

The witness told Ms Kennedy that from his initial investigations he learnt recording equipment installed in 1996 was in place until 2008 when it became obsolete and was removed.

Supt Flynn said there was a system in place on the control desks in divisional headquarters which made for immediate replay of 999 calls, but this became obsolete in the early 1990s and was scrapped.

Asked by Ms Kennedy if he could definitively say that there was no recording equipment prior to the upgrade in 2008 in garda stations throughout the country other than the divisional headquarters, Supt Flynn said he could say “definitely” that the equipment purchased in 1996 was installed in divisional headquarters only.

We already know from the tender document that the system was altered in 2008, but now it seems it was also altered in 1996.

sparkling sea

sopretty wrote: »

Is it common practise for phonecalls out of prisons to solicitors to be bugged also? Is is legal?

Its not legal - dont want to bore anyone to death but the ECHR has looked at this in great deal. The following is from the ECHR website

Protection of lawyer-client privilege

The legal basis for phone interceptions has to provide rules ensuring that information falling under the lawyer-client privilege is not intercepted. The right to legal assistance by a lawyer is a cornerstone of democratic societies. Anybody interested in consulting a lawyer should have the possibility to do so under conditions which allow for a free exchange of information (Campbell v UK, para 46). This right would lose value if persons conferring with their lawyers would have to fear that the conversation might be intercepted.

Therefore, measures have to be taken to secure the protection of privileged conversations. Including in the law a rule to the effect that conversations between lawyers and their clients is not tapped is not a sufficient means to safeguard the confidentiality of conversations between lawyers and their clients It also has to become clear which steps are taken to ensure that this rule is respected in practice (Iordachi v Moldova, para 50). In Kopp v Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights found the respondent state in violation of article 8 ECHR, because the law and practice of phone tapping did not ensure that the exchange of information falling under the lawyer-client privilege was protected. While Swiss law provided that phones of lawyers were not to be tapped, conversations between lawyers and clients were intercepted. The Swiss government argued that according to Swiss law certain pieces of information exchanged between lawyers and their clients were not protected by lawyer-client confidentiality (this concerned for example information regarding the handling of funds). Therefore, the Swiss authorities tried to distinguish between privileged information, which did not become part of the case file, and not privileged information, which could be added to the case file and considered in court. The person tasked to sort between these two types of information was a lawyer working with the post department, which was state-owned and in charge of telecommunications at the material time. The Court criticized this arrangement as generally not sufficiently clear with regard to procedure to distinguish privileged information from non-privileged information and stated that ‘in practice, it is, to say the least, astonishing that this task should be assigned to an official of the Post Office’s legal department, who is a member of the executive, without supervision by an independent judge, especially in this sensitive area of the confidential relations between a lawyer and his clients, which directly concern the rights of the defence.’ . As an example to the contrary, the ECtHR approved of the precautions taken in Dutch law in Aalmoes v The Netherlands. Dutch law distinguished whether the lawyer was a suspect or a third-party. In the instance the lawyer was a suspect, his phone could be tapped, but material protected by the lawyer client privilege had to be sorted out. A representative of the bar association was involved in the decision which material was protected. In case the lawyer was not a suspect, his phone could not be intercepted. Communications falling within the ambit of the lawyer-client privilege, which were intercepted (for example because the suspect in a case called a lawyer) had to be screened by a prosecutor. The prosecutor ordered that privileged information be destroyed. Only information which was not privileged could be taken to the file upon approval by a judge.