Martin Callinan resigns

blueband said:
of course you have to give your consent to a recording...why would it be any other way!?
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A typical protect the criminal law. So criminal phones up and says "I dunnit". Garda jots it down. Before His Lordship Garda relays his notes, criminal says "he's a liar". Garda produces recording. What's wrong with that.

You seem to be making a big distinction between electronic recording and jotting down on paper. Why the distinction?
 
Martin Callinan has not taken any responsibility for anything today. He has decided to retire rather than resign, or he wants to call it retire anyway. I found it amusing listening to Enda Kenny in the Dail today mention that Callinan had retired, when it is of course anything but retirement. At least Patrick Nulty resigned and apologised over his issues.

http://www.garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=12906
 

The distinction is that it is specifically illegal to record a telephone conversation without the other persons knowledge.
 
Postal and Telecommunications Services Act, 1983

Prohibition on interception of telecommunications messages.

98.—(1) A person who—

(a) intercepts or attempts to intercept, or

(b) authorises, suffers or permits another person to intercept, or

(c) does anything that will enable him or another person to intercept,

telecommunications messages being transmitted by the company or who discloses the existence, substance or purport of any such message which has been intercepted or uses for any purpose any information obtained from any such message shall be guilty of an offence.

(2) Subsection (1) shall not apply to any person who is acting—

(a) (i) for the purpose of an investigation by a member of the Garda Síochána of a suspected offence under section 13 of the Post Office (Amendment) Act, 1951 (which refers to telecommunications messages of an obscene, menacing or similar character) on the complaint of a person claiming to have received such a message, or

(ii) in pursuance of a direction issued by the Minister under section 110 , or

(iii) under other lawful authority, or

(b) in the course of and to the extent required by his operating duties or duties for or in connection with the installation or maintenance of a line, apparatus or equipment for the transmission of telecommunications messages by the company.

(3) (a) The company may, with the consent of the Minister, make regulations to carry out the intentions of this section in so far as concerns members of its staff.

(b) The Minister, after consultation with the company, may direct the company to make regulations under paragraph (a) or to amend or revoke regulations made under that paragraph and the company shall comply with that direction.

(c) A person who contravenes any regulation under this subsection shall be guilty of an offence.

(4) (a) The Minister may make regulations prohibiting the provision or operation of overhearing facilities in relation to any apparatus (including private branch telephone exchanges) connected to the network of the company otherwise than in accordance with such conditions as he considers to be reasonable and prescribes in the regulations.

(b) A person who contravenes any regulation under this subsection shall be guilty of an offence.

(5) In this section, “interception” means listening to, or recording by any means, or acquiring the substance or purport of, any telecommunications message without the agreement of the person on whose behalf that message is transmitted by the company and of the person intended by him to receive that message.
 
cremeegg said:
The distinction is that it is specifically illegal to record a telephone conversation without the other persons knowledge.
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I know it's illegal, that's the ass. Record the conversation on paper, no problem. Record it on electronic media, that's illegal. Why? The criminal can deny the written record. Difficult for her to deny the electronic recorded message. The bottom line is that innocent folk don't give a damn about their conversations being recorded. For some totally bizarre reason we seem to want the criminal the "he's a liar" defence.
 
Have I not seen big ads around the country for the Garda Confidential Line?

What is the difference between that and ringing a Garda station?

I don't have any problems with my calls to Irishtown Garda Station being recorded, but they are usually to report suspicious activity.

On the news they said that it was introduced in the 1980's to record emergency calls and bomb threats. That seems fair enough to me. The systems have been updated since on a few occasions, so they were hardly hiding it. If they had introduced it surreptitiously in the Garda station where one of the whistleblowers worked, it might be of some significance.

By the way, what happens when you diall 999? Do they spend 5 minutes telling you that your call will be recorded and may be used for training purposes? Do they say it again in the official language? I think I only called 999 once, and I don't remember them telling me this.

The law should be changed to allow recording of phone conversations. And my time should not be wasted by telling me that the call is being recorded.

Brendan
 
IMO evidence obtained illegally should still be allowed in a criminal case. To reflect the fact that it was obtained illegally, the sentence could be reduced or similar but it should NEVER be allowed to stop a guilty person from being convicted of a crime.
 
cremeegg said:
The distinction is that it is specifically illegal to record a telephone conversation without the other persons knowledge.
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This is incorrect. It is entirely legal to record a conversation that one is part of, even unbeknown to others. That is a side issue anyway.

The question is whether it is credible that a Minister that never misses a trick only found out yesterday about the practice of recordings despite such information being the subject of a letter sent by the Garda Commissioner to the Minister's office two weeks ago and despite such information be contained in a GSOC report to the Minister last summer.
 

I think that is a misunderstanding of what is being claimed here. The Minister clearly knew about the recordings last year. What is being claimed here (as far as I understand it) is that he only found out on Monday about the fact that one of the recordings puts the legality of a case in jeopardy. His office was made aware of this 2 weeks ago but as the Minister was abroad until Monday he was not made aware of this in detail until then. At least that is my understanding of it based on the explanation given by the wily old fox that is Michael Noonan last night!
I'm no fan of Shatter and completely agree with Sunny but I do think there is a lot of misrepresentation of the facts here and to hear the likes of Mick Wallace bang on about what is and is not legal on RTE News just grates ever so slightly.
 
Perhaps so. And if so, methinks that such is a wafer-thin defence.
 

Actually the letter was sent to Shatter five days BEFORE he left the country. If anyone is misrepresenting facts, its Michael Noonan!
 
Watched the whole show, it was quite entertaining.

As a blood sport I think Shatter and even more so Kenny lost out badly. Even the shinner spokesperson on justice did well although he really should have avoided blaming it all on a British plot.

But taking a helicopter view and hearing all those folk from Martin to Wallace to Ross to Boyd Carpenter talk as if the most wicked perfidy since Stalin had been enacted it all seemed such a storm in a teacup. The test for me is Labour - they are relatively unscathed and if the level of wickedness was even half of that portrayed they would surely have to resign.
 
Liamos said:
Actually the letter was sent to Shatter five days BEFORE he left the country. If anyone is misrepresenting facts, its Michael Noonan!
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With Noonan that is very possible - I did say the wily old fox!
I see Shatter is also now claiming he knew nothing of the recordings at all last year (direct quote from him is “I know that there are reports that I knew of the system of recording in Garda stations last year, but this is not the case.”) - so as you said michaelm, that is simply not credible!
The more these politicians try to explain themselves the more confused you are left - and the more cynical you become of the whole thing!
 

Labour have been very silent. I think they might be hedging their bets. If Shatter doesn't apologise to the whistleblowers or at least withdraw his remarks about not co-operating then Labour have a decison to make. Can't see it coming to that though. How the Government have allowed this to beome such a political hot potatoe is beyond me. How much do their advisors get paid again?
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
I simply don't get it. If I phone the Gardaí I would expect that s/he would at least jot down a note of what I had to say, i.e. s/he would "record" it. The fact that this recording is done by technology is surely a good thing.
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The fact that the recording is done by technology, without the explicit consent of either party is what makes it illegal.
 
Leo said:
The fact that the recording is done by technology, without the explicit consent of either party is what makes it illegal.
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I appreciate that, though michaelm seems to have a different take. I am not querying the legal position, I am asking what is the difference in substance? And the answer is obvious. I can deny the contents of a written record where I can't deny the contents of a digital record. Now just who is the right of deniability protecting?
 

You've got the wrong end of the stick Duke. The legal position is that it is illegal to record without the explicit consent of either party, i.e. one party can be recorded without giving consent, as in your example of the Garda taking notes of a conversation. In this case the issue is that the Garda was also unaware that the conversation was being recorded - thus making the recording illegal.
 
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