Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was glad to see that the section of the annual report dealing with special investigations states that the Data Protection Commission has initiated a section 110 inquiry into surveillance by the State sector for law enforcement purposes. The smart CCTV project of Limerick City and County Council seems to have been abandoned because it will not comply with the GDPR and the Data Protection Act. Approximately €350,000 was spent on the project, which is a crazy waste of money. We previously raised problems with the scheme in the Chamber and warned about the lack of a legal basis for it. It proposed that deep learning and artificial intelligence be overlaid on a network of cameras that could count footfall, keep a record of the registration of every passing car 24 hours a day and recognise faces and patterns. Section 38 of the Garda Síochána Act 2005 specifies that CCTV schemes should only be authorised for securing public order and safety in public places, but the proposals for the project published by Limerick City and County Council stated that the scheme would be used to monitor tourism and, bizarrely enough, for animal control. I hope that the decision of the Data Protection Commission regarding CCTV schemes and law enforcement surveillance will, when published, deter other public bodies from wasting such an amount of money on a mass surveillance project that does not have a legal basis.

Last year, I tabled a parliamentary question to try to establish if there were limits on the technology that could be used as part of the Department of Justice and Equality community-based CCTV scheme. The annual report indicates that the Data Protection Commission is investigating automatic number plate recognition cameras, for example, as part of its inquiry. Section 31(d) of the Garda Síochána (Policing Authority and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2015 bestows responsibility to publish guidelines in respect of CCTV cameras on the Policing Authority. I wrote to the Policing Authority in March of last year regarding the use of automated number plate recognition and facial recognition cameras as part of the Department of Justice and Equality community-based CCTV grant aid scheme. The Policing Authority confirmed that, rather strangely, it had not yet issued any guidelines under section 38 of the Act and the Department had not issued guidelines before the Policing Authority was established. As far as I am aware, no guidelines have yet been issued. However, the Policing Authority also stated in its reply to me that it has no role in respect of the technical specifications of CCTV cameras. Neither the Minister nor the Policing Authority seems to have any responsibility for this issue. I submitted a freedom of information request to the Policing Authority seeking further information on any work it may have done on CCTV guidelines. In a 2017 comparative research paper on CCTV, the Policing Authority suggested that a code of practice might be a better idea than required guidelines. However, that would require section 38 to be amended. The Policing Authority also suggested in papers released under a freedom of information request that drafting a code of practice would really be a job for the Data Protection Commission rather than the Policing Authority. In an email sent in September 2017, the head of legal policy and research at the Policing Authority addresses the statutory role in regard to CCTV. The email states that there is limited value in the Policing Authority putting such guidelines in place and that most of the issues in respect of monitoring of CCTV come under the remit of the Data Protection Commission.

Will Mr. Ryan confirm whether the DPC has had any contact with the Policing Authority in respect of these matters and whether it intends to make a decision on the technical specifications of the surveillance equipment it will permit to be used? I refer to how powerful or intrusive such equipment might be.