Ireland national identity database

Kotek Besar

..do we have such a thing?

Reason I ask is, some relatives who are non-EU nationals recently came for a holiday. When they arrived at DUB, immigration offers were asking the purpose of their visiting Ireland etc., then when they said visiting us, they were shown the officer’s computer screen and my Aunty was asked, “is this your brother? Is this your niece? Is this your nephew-in-law?”. The immigration had photos of us all on their system.

I didn’t know we had a National identity database in Ireland. Where did they get all the records from, the passport office?

Samuel T. Cogley

Public Services card I'd imagine.

Peregrinus

We don't have a national identity database. The people whose photographs were on the screen - were they Irish or EU citizens? Is it possible what what your Aunty saw was the product, not of national identity database, but of an immigration database?

Kotek Besar

Thanks for the replies. Some further info..

The incoming visitors (my Aunty & co) are Singapore nationals.

Her brother and her niece were previously Singapore nationals but are now Irish nationals, having lived and worked here for many years.

I wonder then, if the immigration officer simply ran their names and DOB through the GNIB system and pulled their historical records, photos etc, from when they were non-EU nationals and registered with the GNIB? Seems the most likely explanation.

That said, I would have expected that, upon naturalising as Irish citizens, their former non-EU GNIB records would have been erased. Perhaps that is naive. The Irish constitution provides that all Irish citizens are equal. It doesn’t follow then, that the Gardaí should be able to look up photos and other personal information, at will, of Irish citizens who used to also have another nationality, while not of other Irish citizens.

Peregrinus

There's a variety of reasons why people might be in a variety of databases. For example, citizen or not, if you've ever held a driving licence, you'll be in a database of driving licence holders. If you have worked in certain roles involving children, in a database of people who hold or have held working-with-children clearance. And so on.

I don't hink tthere's any practice of routinely deleting people from the database when their data ceases to be current for whatever purpose the database is kept. Apart from anything else, it would cause inconvenience both to the administration and to the individual if, e.g. you let your driving licence lapse and when you went to renew it found that all data relating to you had been deleted from the system.

But there's obvious civil liberties issues with the ways in which the information in these databases can be accessed, and can be used. It makes sense, perhaps, that a database with immigration information on it is readily accessible by immigration officers at ports and airports. But should immigration officers be calling up data in relation to people who are not themselves seeking to enter the country?

Vetch

Peregrinus wrote: »

There's a variety of reasons why people might be in a variety of databases. For example, citizen or not, if you've ever held a driving licence, you'll be in a database of driving licence holders. If you have worked in certain roles involving children, in a database of people who hold or have held working-with-children clearance. And so on.

I don't hink tthere's any practice of routinely deleting people from the database when their data ceases to be current for whatever purpose the database is kept. Apart from anything else, it would cause inconvenience both to the administration and to the individual if, e.g. you let your driving licence lapse and when you went to renew it found that all data relating to you had been deleted from the system.

But there's obvious civil liberties issues with the ways in which the information in these databases can be accessed, and can be used. It makes sense, perhaps, that a database with immigration information on it is readily accessible by immigration officers at ports and airports. But should immigration officers be calling up data in relation to people who are not themselves seeking to enter the country?

There are three things about what was described by the op
(1) people were shown other people's personal data
(2) agree with you, don't know if there is legitimate basis for accessing the third party data
(3) there is data protection law about what you mention. Data should be deleted when the purpose for which it was sought is expired, even if it causes inconvenience, unless of course, there is some sort of legitimate basis for continued retention. It's very easy to just keep info on databases (and paper, for that matter) but under GDPR controllers are going to have to document various things, including how long they're keeping data (Articles 13, 14, 30).

The database the op is asking about may not come under GPDR, but the new Directive for crime data instead, although the same right to know how long data is going to be retained seems to be there.