This article is also available in:
Deutsch: ENDitorial: Missbrauch der irischen Polizeidatenbanken
In 2003, the then Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, stated that he "knew that journalists were bribing gardaí (police)". This was said in the context of proposed legislation which would create a crime of leaking information. Unfortunately, the intervening years seem to have confirmed the continued existence of police abuse of confidential information, resulting in a recent announcement by the Data Protection Commissioner of a national audit into garda compliance with data protection law.
The audit will focus on access to the main police database system, known as PULSE, which was introduced in 1999. While that system has a read/write audit trail, this has not acted as a deterrent to abuse - some police have sought to evade the audit trail by requesting others to carry out searches on their behalf, and login sharing has also been a problem. Consequently, in his 2010 Annual Report the Data Protection Commissioner stated that:
"In 2007 we agreed a data protection Code of Practice with the Gardaí which included undertakings to monitor access to the Garda PULSE system. It is disappointing to report that, despite our repeated engagements on this issue, the monitoring of access by members of An Garda Síochána to PULSE falls short of the standards we expect. We wish to see significant progress by the Gardaí in pro-actively monitoring PULSE access in 2011 and will be carrying out an audit to satisfy ourselves of this progress."
The most recent allegations generally concern personal use of the system, for example by using it to check on daughters' boyfriends or to check the history of cars which they are buying. However, allegations of more serious abuses are also common, including the sale of information to insurance companies and even criminals.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to provide a full assessment of abuses which have taken place. While many allegations have been published by the media and some internal garda investigations carried out, the results of these investigations have not been published, disciplinary sanctions (if any) are seldom made public and there is no comprehensive official report. This secrecy is a failing in itself and makes it impossible for the public to have confidence in the system.
Nevertheless, there have been a number of cases in which abuses have been clearly established and some significant examples from recent years include a court award of 70 000 Euros damages to a family who were harmed by a garda leak (2007), the dismissal of a garda for leaking information to a drug dealer (2010) and most recently the finding that a detective sergeant abused her position to monitor an ex-boyfriend through his phone records (2011). A particularly telling example in 2007 followed the high profile death of a person struck by a car driven by an off-duty garda. In that case, 187 individual gardai accessed that person's PULSE record following his death, without apparent justification. An investigation into that incident recommended that: "supervisory ranks should regularly monitor the use of PULSE to ensure that members adhere to their legal and disciplinary obligations in regard to its proper use and suitable measures should be put in place by the Garda authorities to ensure that audit-trails of the usage of PULSE and any other official information systems can always be accurate and verifiable."
Unfortunately, it seems that several years later this has yet to be done.
GRA's concern about bribery claim, RTÉ News (04.08.2003)
http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0904/justice.html
Family awarded 70,000 Euros over garda leak, RTÉ News (17.01.2007)
http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0117/gray.html
Report by the Commission following the death of Mr. Derek O'Toole on March
4th 2007 and subsequent complaints and investigation under Section 98,
Garda Síochána Act, 2005 (10.2008)
http://www.gardaombudsman.ie/GSOC/Report_October2008.pdf
Garda Data Protection Code of Practice (12.11.2007)
http://www.garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=136&Lang=1
Gardaí line up 17 officers for quizzing over leaks to 'Don', Evening Herald
(16.10.2009)
http://www.herald.ie/news/gardai-line-up-17-officers-for-quizzing-over...
Walsh, Human Rights and Policing in Ireland (Dublin: Clarus Press, 2009), Ch. 32
Garda sacked for leaked secrets to Don's crime gang, Evening Herald
(18.06.2010)
http://www.herald.ie/news/garda-sacked-for-leaking-secrets-to-dons-cri...
2010 Annual Report of the Data Protection Commissioner (03.2010)
http://www.dataprotection.ie/documents/annualreports/2010AR.pdf
EDRi-gram: No effective sanction for Police abuse of Irish data retention
system (24.08.2011)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.16/abuse-data-retention-ireland
(Contribution by TJ McIntyre - EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland)