Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I take on board the civil liberties and civil rights argument. It is hugely important. However, when we look at how crime has changed over the decades, it has become more and more transnational. I am not just talking about criminal drugs gangs. I know of the work being done by Europol in trying to catch and deal with sexual predators. This is not just about the transmission of images but the people involved in creating the images on location.

The sharing of that information has helped to catch the criminals where they are abusing children, so if we can go a little further on that it would be hugely welcome.

Another area is cyberterrorism. More and more, our political system is subject to misinformation coming through troll farms, usually not within EU member states, admittedly, but sometimes in countries that have an interest in EU accession or where the EU states bordering them have better access to tracking down and tracing that type of information. As such, there is a national discretion issue and a privacy and data protection issue as well because any sort of expanded powers for electronic surveillance and cross-border interception will raise civil liberties concerns, but we have to balance those with the common good. As it stands, criminals are literally able to get away with murder because of lack of credible information.

We need to upgrade our systems throughout the European Union and this protocol is adapting an original framework done in 1959 when we barely had colour television, let alone the Internet or AI-assisted technology. We are talking about reducing delays in judicial co-operation through videoconferencing and having the interception of telecommunications and digital evidence being processed faster. Ireland’s opting in would allow a collective EU response which we have not always been able to have up to now.

I would say to the Minister of State to be careful, but from his contribution I do not believe the Government is literally trying to turn Ireland into part of an EU Big Brother state to share people’s information. I do not see it that way at all. There was a similar argument made yesterday about CETA. I was originally against that agreement, but with the advent of the Trump Administration and the hostile view towards Europe and towards Ireland, greater trade co-operation with Canada is viewed as being necessary and there were checks and balances put in. As this goes, we will see checks and balances and we are still a sovereign state with the ability to opt out of protocols as and when required.

All things being balanced, the Council of Europe has rules and the EU is a rules-based institution that has protection for individuals and their privacy. It has protections for consumers and environmental protections. The European Union is not looking to turn into a Big Brother superpower. In fact, our constituents are looking for more surveillance, in many cases. We do not want Chinese-style monitoring on every corner but CCTV is being requested more and more. If can get more of that information while protecting individual rights, it is a good thing in the modern age.

I mentioned a while back that our children are being abused online through acceding to social media companies operating unimpeded. I had criticisms of the Government’s contribution on the ID verification aspect of it, so I am not unaware of the risks and not doing enough, but in this case, through the existing rules in Europe, the parliamentary means, the Council of Ministers, etc., any kind of enhanced surveillance and cross-border co-operation can only be a good thing because it is specifically in terms of catching and dealing with criminals. It is sharing the information on that basis. It is not sharing people’s eating habits, it is not sharing their standard online practices or what their individual likes and dislikes are. It is following up on people who may be involved in crime. It is following up on organisations that are trying to dismember our democratic process in elections and outside them and spewing misinformation. Whether this works, ultimately, depends on all other states opting, and the levels of co-operation may be different between EU member states. It will only work if everyone works towards it. The Government should be very vigilant in protecting individual rights, but at the same time, on the general principle, we need to be pushing more towards co-operation and sharing this information for the common good.

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