ireland
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Why Ireland is the Achilles heel of the EU’s fightback against Big Tech
The recent controversies surrounding Big Tech moguls Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg — who are defying content moderation norms and accusing the EU of censorship — should come as no surprise to those following the tech industry closely. For over a decade, Big Tech has approached the EU's robust data protection framework as little more than a compliance checkbox, rather than a set of binding legal obligations.
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Irish Media Regulator must address dangerous age verification in its new online safety code
On 30 January 2024, EDRi submitted its comments on the Irish Media Regulator’s (Coimisiún na Meán) new Online Safety Code in a public consultation, highlighting significant concerns about age verification.
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Irish and French parliamentarians sound the alarm about EU’s CSA Regulation
The Irish parliament’s justice committee and the French Senate have become the latest voices to sound the alarm about the risk of general monitoring of people’s messages in the proposed Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) Regulation.
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Irish DPC burns taxpayer money over delay cases
Irish DPC to pay tens of thousands in legal costs over 47 months delay in cases against WhatsApp and Instagram
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Irish police phone tapping undermines citizens’ rights
An Garda Síochána, the Irish police force has fallen, yet again, under public scrutiny for privacy violations of innocent citizens. An investigation by the Irish Independent newspaper has found that members of the public had their phones tapped without proper justification. The widespread phone tapping was revealed after a senior officer tried to highlight his […]
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ENDitorial: It is possible that Netflix is legal in Ireland – or not
Perhaps it should come as a surprise that copyrighted data are protected in law more rigorously than personal data in Europe. In data protection law, there is a “legitimate interest” exception: if you are processing personal data because you have a “legitimate interest” in doing so, and if this does not undermine the rights of […]
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UPC Ireland trapped by its own ToS, has to introduce “three strikes”
UPC Ireland, a largest Irish telecoms provider, has been obliged, by injunction, to introduce a “three strikes” disconnection strategy by the Irish High Court. UPC’s own terms of service are at least partly at fault. In 2009, the former Irish monopoly telecoms provider, Eircom, entered into a voluntary arrangement with the music industry in order […]
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Revelations on Safe Harbour violations go to hearing at EU Court
In late 2012, Max Schrems, a privacy advocate and member of the Europe v Facebook group requested that the Irish Data Protection Commissioner investigate the alleged sharing of European Facebook users’ information with the United States National Security Agency (NSA), in the light of the Snowden revelations. These revelations suggest that Facebook and the US […]
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Irish ISP introduces child porn blocking – doesn’t know why
The Irish broadband provider UPC has introduced blocking for web addresses that are alleged to contain child abuse material. It chose an interesting moment to do this – with the total number of domains allegedly hosting abuse material half what it was ten years ago and with sites staying online for historically short periods of […]
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Europe vs. Facebook class action attracts over 60 000 plaintiffs
Privacy activist Max Schrems, founder of the “Europe-v-Facebook” initiative, is known for his battles involving Internet social network giant Facebook. However, all the lawsuits he filed in Ireland haven’t led to meaningful outcomes, so far. Therefore, Mr. Schrems now takes a different approach, by suing Facebook Ireland Ltd. This time he has filed suit in […]
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Data-retention scandal in Ireland
Ireland has had a secret data retention regime for almost a year, after the Cabinet confidentially instructed telecommunications operators to store traffic information about every phone, fax and mobile call for at least three years. The Irish Data Protection Commissioner Joe Meade revealed this last monday at a forum on data retention. Telcos even used […]
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