Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to all of the amendments in this grouping. Amendment No. 14 would make it an offence for a garda to turn off their body camera or cause it not to be operating in the first instance to knowingly and purposefully conceal the use or misuse of force. The Minister advised during Committee Stage discussions that she could not accept this amendment because placing the circumstances where body cameras should or should not be operating within legislation would be too restrictive. The Minister advised that, instead, they would be set out within the yet to be defined codes of practice.

As with previous amendments, this is a serious, significant issue for me, not only that this will be in codes of practice and not in regulation but also that we have not yet seen those codes of practice. It is hard to have full confidence in what will be when we have not yet seen what those codes of practice are. I reiterate the point that codes of practice govern the use of body cams in the UK and they have been insufficient to prevent abuse. I hope that we learn from the failings of those codes of practice. If we do not, Ireland will be no different. We must insert penalties into the primary legislation for selective use of body cams or the legislation will be toothless and we will be in the exactly the same position as the UK.

The legislation, as drafted, creates specific penalties for destroying data collected by a body cam but it does not create any penalties for selectively turning on and off body cams, which we know to be real issues from looking at other jurisdictions.

On Second Stage, I highlighted the 2021 reporting by Reuters on the use of body cams in the United States that found that wide disparities remain in how they are employed and when the footage is made public. More than half of the jurisdictions in the US where body cams are used had no clear guidelines for when they should be turned on in 2018 but the majority of these laws have been updated in the intervening years to specifically address concerns regarding the selective use of body cams.

I implore the Minister to learn from the mistakes of other jurisdictions and to bake safeguards into the legislation to prevent the abuse and misuse of body cameras by Garda personnel. We have presented overwhelming evidence previously on this issue and urge the Minister to take this opportunity to address this within this legislation.

Amendment No. 17 inserts a safeguard in the Bill that would prevent someone from sharing data gathered by a garda-operated recording device unless they had lawful authority to do so. If the amendment were accepted, someone who unlawfully shared photos, video or audio data captured by a recording device with a third party would be guilty of an offence. We all remember the tragic experience of the late Dara Quigley, who had very sensitive CCTV footage recorded by a garda who then shared it within a WhatsApp group. The garda was never charged criminally. This amendment tries to prevent that from ever happening in relation to data that will be gathered by garda-operated recording devices.

In the Committee Stage debate, the Minister advised that my concerns in this area are covered by Coco’s Law but my understanding of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act is that it is only the sharing of intimate images or video that is an offence. In the Act, intimate images are interpreted as images purporting to be of a person’s “genitals, buttocks or anal region and, in the case of a female, her breasts” or their underwear and images in which a person is naked or engaged in sexual activity. The data we are referring to in this amendment is broader in scope than that. With this amendment, we intend to cover scenarios where a person may be incapacitated, inebriated, having a psychotic episode, under the influence with regard to experiencing addiction or otherwise affected.

I am sure we have all seen videos online, whether from this jurisdiction or another, where footage of someone in a vulnerable state is captured and shared widely. This amendment seeks to prevent that as it related to data captured by Garda personnel in the course of their duties.

The BBC report I spoke about earlier found cases in seven different police forces in the UK where police officers shared camera footage with colleagues or friends in person, on WhatsApp or on social media. If this happens in the UK, it can happen here. Not every incident reported by the BBC related to the sharing of intimate imagery and so it is my assertion that we need to insert this safeguard to protect people’s fundamental right to privacy, particularly those in vulnerable positions. I struggle to comprehend the argument against doing so and I hope the Minister will accept this amendment.

Like amendment No. 17, amendment No. 71 seeks to prevent the sharing of data obtained by a recording device from being shared unlawfully with a third party. If the amendment were accepted, a person who unlawfully shared a photo, video or audio data captured by CCTV camera that had been installed under the auspices of this Bill would be guilty of an offence. As I set out when speaking about amendment No. 17, this is a necessary safeguard to protect vulnerable persons who may have been the subject of a recording. While I appreciate the sharing of intimate images without consent is covered by Coco’s Law, as I said, there are many scenarios wherein vulnerable individuals might have recordings captured of them that are not intimate in nature under the legislation but, if shared with a third party or on social media, could undermine their physical and mental well-being.

Like amendments Nos. 17 and 71, amendment No. 77 seeks to prevent the unlawful sharing of data obtained by a recording device with a third party. If the amendment were accepted, the person who unlawfully shared a photo, video or audio data captured by CCTV camera that had been installed under the auspices of the Bill would be guilty of an offence. I spoke to the context of this amendment when speaking to amendments Nos. 17 and 71 and so I will refrain from repeating the case again in respect of their inclusion.