Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Picking up where I left off, section 43(2) of the Bill refers to Garda management being responsible for giving clear directions to gardaí in their use of cameras but mentions the use of discretion. There are many instances where discretion is needed. We should not be over-prescriptive in a lot of areas but this is not one of them. It is unfair not to be clear with the Garda in this regard. This goes back to my point about the absence of a central piece in this legislation.

Section 11(1) provides that a person will be guilty of an offence if he or she falsely conceals, destroys or in other ways gets rid of information gathered by a recording device. However, it is silent in regards to someone turning off a device to ensure the information does not exist in the first place. This is a far easier option for anyone seeking to conceal behaviour. It is important we look at this from both sides. The vast majority of gardaí will be absolutely compliant but it only takes a small number to bring the force into disrepute. This again comes down to the need to have more detail about the use of these technologies written into the legislation, rather than codes of practice which are not legally enforceable to the same degree. I understand these sorts of technologies seem like an incredibly useful tool in policing but the reality is far more complicated than the producers of some of these technologies would have us believe. There is no conclusive evidence that body-worn cameras improve safety for police officers. There have been many studies around the world on these cameras and any metadata analysis which has taken place has not found any statistically significant changes.

It is important that we protect our police force in taking on the challenges they must sometimes face. I reinforce the point that this is not a case of resisting something that could protect people who are doing a very dangerous job. Some of them are my neighbours and others are the sons and daughters of my friends. I am acutely aware we have to protect people on both sides. It may well be the case that cameras give a feeling of safety and their use may not be backed up by evidence. Gardaí should feel as safe and protected as possible in doing their work. They face incredible risk while doing vital work to protect our communities but they deserve more than the illusion of safety. It is not clear that body cameras provide any more than that.

Much more research is needed before we enact a programme of introducing body cameras across the whole Garda force. It would make far more sense to operate a pilot programme to ensure the cameras will be effective in achieving what we want them to achieve. We also need to stack this up against the infringement of privacy rights of individuals who will be filmed by gardaí as they are minding their own business walking past officers on the street. While that may well not be the way this technology is to be used, it will be especially significant if real-time facial recognition technology could be used in these body cameras. That is one of the central points I want to make.

To be clear about what real-time facial recognition systems entail, most of them follow a similar pattern. Using artificial intelligence, AI, the system detects the presence of a face within an image. The system will then analyse the detected face and create a number of relevant data points used to identify one person from another. Then the system will compare those data points against pre-existing records and should, in theory at any rate, be able to recognise the person in the frame. Imagine for a second the number of faces a system operating on a CCTV camera on Grafton Street would scan and the number of data points it would collect in order to find the person being sought. To start with, there would need to be a significantly large database to create and store these highly sensitive data from innocent people who are of no interest to the Garda and who would be passively surveilled without their knowledge.

The sheer number of security breaches in Government Departments over the past few years should be enough to give us significant pause for thought. I feel like I am talking in a vacuum about this legislation because this central piece is so absent that it is very difficult to imagine what is proposed. I am probably looking at worst-case scenarios but I do not know what the Minister is bringing forward.

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