Private eyes done for "blagging".

Snickers Man

I have very mixed feelings about the two Private Investigators who were successfully prosecuted (if that's the correct legal term here) for contravening the Data Protection Act on behalf of various Credit Unions who were their clients.

It seems the Private Eyes, two middle aged women from Wicklow (No Philip Marlowe, Jim Rockford or Tom Magnum types they) were retained by the Credit Unions to track down people who had welched on their debts. Their role, it would seem, was to find out the present whereabouts of their subjects and to pass on that information to their client so that due legal process could ensue.

It was NOT a case of beating down the subject's door and setting about them with a baseball bat. Certainly, the two ladies in question did not look to be capable of such tactics anyway.

Where the investigators fell foul of the law was when they used private information about their subjects, which had been provided to them by their clients the Credit Unions, to elicit more up to date information from state bodies including the HSE and Department of Social Protection.

Among the data that had been given to them by their clients were names, dates of birth and crucially PPS Numbers. The investigators used this information to make misleading phone calls to the state bodies, pretending to be someone they were not, and finding out the current whereabouts of their subjects as a result.

They pleaded guilty to the charges brought against them and they and their company were fined a total of €10,000.

Now I'm all in favour of protecting personal privacy but who was really at fault here? Was it the credit unions, for providing them with PPS numbers in the first place? Or the state bodies for being so cavalier and trusting with data over the phone? Or the debtors for doing a flit while not paying back their loans?

And surely institutions like Credit Unions have the right to track down people who owe them money. They are under enough pressure at the moment, what with "Insolvency Practitioners" advising people in debt to prioritise their payments to other creditors over the Credit Unions.

If Credit Unions go bust, which they will do if people can so easily wriggle off the hook of paying them back, who will occupy the gap in the market catering to the traditional customer of Credit Unions?

You will always find people to lend you money; all that varies is the terms and conditions. The real world equivalents of Tony Soprano and Nidge Delaney will do a lot worse than get a few middle-aged biddies to blag your current address out of the Social.

What do people think?

Beano

Just to clarify they were prosecuted for passing the information they obtained from state bodies back to the credit union. The credit union passing the information to the private investigators doesnt seem to be the issue here. Presumably the investigators were acting as agents to the credit union so passing the information to them would be allowed.