Mr. T. J. McIntyre:

We are very glad to have the opportunity to address the joint committee. Digital Rights Ireland was set up in 2005. We had a concern that while traditional civil liberties were well represented offline by the likes of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, new issues were arising online that needed an additional input that perhaps did not come from more traditional groups. We have since joined similar groups across Europe in the European digital rights initiative and instituted a constitutional challenge against a European law that we believe violates privacy. This challenge will shortly be given a hearing before the European Court of Justice. We have also engaged with people, including a number of those present, on issues such as online privacy, Internet filtering and blocking.

I am associate dean at the school of law in UCD, where I specialise in information technology law issues. I am also a practising solicitor, working both for social media websites and users who believe their rights have been violated. My colleague, Mr. Fergal Crehan, is a practising barrister. He has advised Digital Rights Ireland from the outset, including in our constitutional challenge which is before the European Court of Justice. He is also a specialist in this area.

As committee members are aware, abuse of the online medium is very far from being a new phenomenon. On the slide before us we have the first report I was able to find of a criminal conviction for this type of behaviour. It dates back to 1999, when a man was jailed under the old criminal libel legislation for spreading false allegations of sexual abuse against a teacher. That example illustrates that this is very far from being a new issue and that it is one very much regulated by existing laws. Going back to 1999, we see that where the will and the resources are available to allow enforcement, we can achieve results using existing laws.

I have listed on the slide I am displaying a number of the laws that can be used. I had to hold myself back so as to cram them into one slide as I could have filled two or three listing relevant legislation, but I did not want to bore members. I would like to make some particular points about certain aspects of the legislation, some of which have been mentioned in previous hearings. Deputy Dessie Ellis mentioned earlier the phenomenon in his constituency of threats being made via YouTube. It is not always realised that there is an existing offence which applies. The Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act provides in section 5 for a distinct offence of making threats to kill or cause serious harm. Therefore, this constitutes a crime which can be prosecuted under existing laws.

Deputy Noel Harrington asked earlier about the rights of the subjects of YouTube videos. Again, these rights are already amply protected by Irish data protection law. There are general rights in section 2 of the Data Protection Acts to ensure one's information is fairly obtained and processed. There is also a specific right in section 6A of the Data Protection Acts which provides people with the ability to object to the processing of his or her personal data that will cause him or her distress. Perhaps there is not adequate awareness of these rights and we need more education of users about their rights and more resources to enforce these rights.

That leads us to the point made by Deputy Ann Phelan who mentioned the jurisdictional issue and the possibility of cross-border enforcement. One of the benefits of data protection law is that it is largely harmonised across Europe. Therefore, we already have instances to which we can refer if material is hosted in the United Kingdom, Germany or France, etc.

We can go to the local data protection regulators and ask them to enforce Irish citizens' rights, which are largely the same in those jurisdictions as they are here. We already have substantial laws in place that deal with most of these points.

I would like to respond to what Deputy Seán Kenny said earlier about traceability. This is covered in two ways. A so-called Norwich Pharmacal order can be used to enable users to be identified by the High Court in civil actions. Section 8 of the Data Protection Act enables information to be released to the Garda by YouTube - for example, to aid the force in its criminal investigations. While the tools are already there to authorise disclosure in many cases, whether there is enough awareness of those tools may be another matter.