Phone tapping of Campaigners

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Wed Jun 01, 2011 13:36

only to be expected. Pre-empt em. Nail your colours to the mast. Fuck their intimidation. I've had the shell2sea on the front window for several years. The gards drive round the estate every day. No doubt I wont expect them the day they decide to call, but meantime, I aint slinkin. And it has forced me to have arguments I could have done without, but we aint makin any progress without arguments we could ALL do without.
And this way many who never heard of the issue, including the kids passing by, can google the website and fill in a blank. Let THEM hide under rocks, the solution is going to have to be different from their covert ops, or it wont change, except cosmetically like Obama.

by foxbravo995 - none Wed Jun 01, 2011 13:21

So the lid is off on watching and listeners or plain old phone tapping in Ireland and against the bunch of cretins of a Government in Dublin. I see some of what ECHELON can do (and by all sorts of other code words) is reveled in a newspaper here yesterday. However you can bet on it the Wikileak is only a very small part of what is being done and there is no way the US is going to stop soon with Southern Ireland seen as a hot-bed of terrorist-grade anti-Americanism, muslim terrorist extremists, anti-capitalists, seinn-fein extremists and a motley collection of others opposed to the Anglo- American W.A.S.P world view! As someone who help build "the system" you might as well give up and play dead now! Dublin could not even get the economy!

by diogenes diodes Fri Jun 22, 2007 17:51

On June 15th 1999 then taoiseach Albert Reynolds spoke of revelations through a British telly "Channel 4" documentary which had revealed full interception of every phone call made in the republic of Ireland over a ten year period by the UK GCHQ agency (known in the trade as the doughnut & this Atlantic side equivalent and partner of the US based NSA) through 3 antena systems (one of which was a sub-marine set-up). The information monitored had security (terrorism IRA) value but also commercial and economic and was especially resented by the Irish authorities for the part it played during the While the operation, which was started in 1989 under Margaret Thatcher's premiership, was defended on the grounds that it was used to counter terrorism, the information gathered also had economic and commercial value. It meant for example that the UK government had advanced notice fo the bottom line the Irish state would take during the currency crisis which undermined the Irish punt between September 1992 and January 1993.

"Channel 4 News said [a] windowless, 13-storey tower at Capenhurst [administered by GCHQ] contained electronic equipment to collect and store all faxes, e-mails, telexes and data communications. It is alleged that the contents of the intercepted communications were scanned for key words and subjects of interests. When the tower was erected in 1989, the Ministry of Defence held a meeting with local residents and urged them not to talk about the site. In return they were given free fencing and double-glazing." A Home Office spokesman then said: "In accordance with standard practice, the Government does not comment on alleged interception activity. "Under the Interception of Communications Act, interception of any communication on a public telecommunications network in the UK requires a warrant to be signed by the [UK] Secretary of State. "Where someone believes their communications have been intercepted in breach of the Act they can take their case to an independent tribunal or to the police." He added: "There have been no successful challenges to the Act in the European Court of Human Rights." of course the UK is not covered by the ECHR.... but anyway.

You're all monitored. bugged. earwigged. recorded. weighed and counted. doesn't it make you feel wanted? The history of capitalism and all forms of social order and control which we rail against and yet unthinkingly accept as "civilisation" or relative "modernity" is in fact traced from the origins of espionage. The establishment and winning of global imperial possessions and trade roots was completely reliant on snoopery. I try to bring my students through it simply by playing the pirate game. It's their job to locate a fleet of galleons carrying gold or silver bullion in an area of 25 million hectares of open ocean. Think of it as a sort of large-scale version of the "battleships" game. They can only locate "the spanish main" by tippy toppy spycraft. That is to say - no matter how good a sailor Walter Raleigh was, without information from Grainne Mhaoil - chance aint going to beat cheating.

So it appears that activists in Ireland, especially those connected to the S2S campaign need learn the basics of counter-espionage. Speaking an obscure language backwards is better than codewords. I assure you.

by clicker Fri Jun 22, 2007 17:37

I'm sure people do get their phones tapped, but all this clickety-click business on the end of the line doesn't make sense. If the state has the technology to eavesdrop they surely have the ability to do it without making the clicks.

by Aragon Fri Jun 22, 2007 16:35

...where S2S campaigners are concerned the Gardai film everyone at the Bellanaboy site - they want people to know they are being monitored. With billions of dollars involved and the precendent Shell have set elsewhere in the world - only a naive twerp would think the campaigners were not being tapped.

by Sean Doherty Fri Jun 22, 2007 07:14

In other words, Observer, there is absolutely no way for you to know whether or not your phone is being tapped. The judge can find whether or not the tapping was legal - in other words, did the Minister for Justice approve it or not. That leaves the important question unanswered - whether or not the Minister had the least bit of justification for ordering a phone tap. I've read the legislation, and there doesn't seem to be much lee-way for the judge to question the Minister's judgement. That is, assuming the judge was minded to.

As for paranoia - Chekov has already pointed out why it's very plausible to believe S2S campaign members had their phone tapped. I'll just repeat:

1) The Irish state has a track record of spying on people who are very much part of mainstream political life (Vincent Browne, Bruce Arnold, Geraldine Kennedy).

2) The Irish state clearly is determined to beat the S2S campaign and was willing to mobilise hundreds of cops to stop protests at Rossport; it wouldn't be a huge leap for them to tap a few phones if they thought it would help undermine the campaign

3) All that's needed for a wiretap is permission from the Justice Minister, and the then-minister McDowell was on public record describing the S2S campaign as subversive and illegitimate ("Provo tactics won't work" as he told reporters).

So putting 1 and 2 and 3 together, it's very plausible to suspect that the State would carry out phone tapping. Add to that the suspicions of people like Cowley and Garavan, based on the fact that Gardai knew things they shouldn't have been able to know without inside information, and you've got a very plausible story indeed. Dismissing it all as "paranoia" that requires medical treatment is a pretty feeble move.

by Observer Thu Jun 21, 2007 21:19

I see the paranoids are on again!! I'm quite sure ex TD Crowley could give you a little tablet that might cure you of that.

In the unlikely event that your phones are being tapped, under the relevent legislation there is appointed a member of the judiciary to which you can apply and he/she will investigate the matter.I am sure you can find out quite easily who it is.

I understand that he/she will only investigate whether the proported bugging is being done in accordance with the law and won't actually tell you whether your phone is bugged or not. You will be told whether anything illegal is being done. That is all. To do otherwise would, i suppose, kind of defeat the purpose of bugging in the first place!

by Undercover brother Thu Jun 21, 2007 00:06

The clicking sounds during calls just before ringing clear sign somebody is up on your phone, the phone call that starts it all off with nobody there thats the tap logon call.

I`ve had this happen me before days later the gardai arrived....lol don`t ask....

Stumbled across your post, think somebody is on my house phone....

Just a note for all you 086 users..... most O2 mobile masts are situated on top of garda stations.....

by WireStripper Wed Apr 04, 2007 15:13

Specifically use Zfone (does the encryption)
http://zfoneproject.com/getstarted.html
with Gizmo (does the talks bits)
http://www.gizmoproject.com/download.php

It's free, it's easy, people love it, big brother hates it.

Brought to you courtesy of Phil Zimmerman of PGP fame.

by Chekov Tue Apr 03, 2007 02:32

me says "Firstly ,smart dust (passive)exists and is read by an active reader."

I'm afraid that I'm going to have to see some evidence from a fair number of reputable peer-reviewed sources before I accept that.

Although I am not an electonic or electric engineer, I currently work on a project where I have to write software to manage access to the radio-frequency spectrum. This means that I have to encode and understand the various physical laws and parameters that affect the propagation of electro-magnetic radiation. It also means that I read a selection of the published research in the area, attend lectures and conferences and so on to understand the practical problems in the domain.

I say this not, as you so snidely suggested, to claim to be especially clever or in order to pretend to be an expert in the domain (I'm not), but in order to provide some substantiation that my opinion is based upon some familiarity with the state of the art in this specilist field, which most people are obvoiusly not going to know much about (it's not exactly the most exciting or glamorous field in the world). I also provided a quote and a link to a fairly accessible discussion of the various limitations to transponder range and size. I can provide you with many more, for example, this 2005 study: "The read range for passive tags is typically a few inches to about 4 feet (ft) (approximately 1.2 meters [m])." http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/ocd/ecritask4.html

Anyway, from all that I read and see, I would be absolutely amazed if your claim that ""smart dust is another method of tracking People who attend certain meetings. These are tiny passive or active chips that can be 'trailed' and are scattered upon non suspecting individuals" was remotely possible given current technology.

Basically, it works like this. Transponder range increases exponentially with the length of the chip antenna (dipole aperture). Current technological limitations are such that passive RFID antennae many times longer than your claimed 'smart dust' are limited to very short ranges. Another limitation is that transmitted energy requirements increase with range and obstructions; at the distances and on the terrains where you'd be deploying the devices, to get any sort of coverage approaching usefulness for remotely tracking an individual's movements, you'd be well over the limit where you start microwaving the population. That's not to mention the cost effectiveness of using high-precision manufacturing techniques to make devices which you deploy as 'dust'. Furthermore, to get any sort of return for your money, lasting more than a single day, you'd be limited to the non-washing, non-clothes-changing segment of the target population. I'd have to question the cost-effectiveness of such an approach to surveillance.

Anyway, I go to such length to refute your claim not as some competitive pursuit, nor because I have any particular interest in convincing you that I'm right, but because I think that making such implausible claims about the technical surveillance capabilities of the state, by people who write as if they have an expertise which they do not possess, is irresponsible in the extreme. It fuels ridiculous and incapacitating levels of paranoia. It serves to drag down the various plausible information to which it attaches itself into the mire.

For example, the above story and the claim by Jerry Cowley, that phones of Shell to Sea campaigners are being tapped is eminently plausible. The state has several well known precedents where they were caught out illegally bugging the phones of high-profile public figures, who reside very much in the mainstream (Vincent Browne and Geraldine Kennedy). The number of people whose phones were and are tapped for reasons of suspected republican activity is unknown, but presumably large as there is every indication that the Gardai and, in particular the special branch, have cast a wide net when watching republicans.

Phone taps are authorised by the minister for justice and such is the nature of that role that it is hard to imagine any minister since the introduction of this 'oversight' in 1983 refusing gardai requests for taps on those deemed a threat to public order. The only judicial oversight of the process is an annual review and, every year since the introduction of this 'oversight' the judge's "report has been a single identical line every year.

“Since my appointment I have kept the operation of the Act under review and I am satisfied that the provisions have been complied with.

” [http://www.tuppenceworth.ie/blog/index.php/2006/03/08/m...taps/ ]

This means that the process is, in effect, entirely obscure to the public, its workings are clandestine.

The number of police that have been deployed to Rossport makes it quite clear that the state does indeed consider the campaign to be a serious threat to public order. Thus I think it's probable that some bugging of shell to sea campaigners is taking place. If they're willing to deploy hundreds of police - with camera teams - to a remote corner of Mayo, they're highly likely to also take the relatively cheap, easy and conveniently secret step of bugging those identified as ringleaders. Since McDowell and large sections of the media have repeatedly denounced the campaign's hi-jacking by subversives, it's impossible to imagine him turning down requests to monitor those identified by the gardai as ringleaders.

The deputy data protection commissioner recently announced publically that the gardai had made 10,000 requests to telecommunications companies for access to their records in the last year, all of which had been granted [http://www.tuppenceworth.ie/blog/index.php/2006/12/05/f...bobs/ ]. These requests are made with very little oversight and there is no information about their purpose or content in the public domain. The data protection commissioner published a case study in which an anonymous journalist made a freedom of information request to his/her mobile phone company asking them whether the guards had accessed his/her records. The commissioner's response was that she could not "confirm or deny that the Gardai had sought or received the information in question as to do so could frustrate the powers of inquiry of the Gardai in their normal work". So it appears that this surveillance too operates in secret and it is very difficult to assess what information is accessed, or the scope of the access, but it could include any and all of voice, location tracking, text messages, and billing and payment information. It is once again difficult to see why these 10,000 requests wouldn't have included the records of those identified by the gardai as ringleaders in Mayo, keeping an eye on them would certainly fall under the gardai's interpretation of "their normal work".

So, to the anonymous "me", to sum up, the point of my comment is not that the state doesn't uses surveillance against those identified as threats to public order. It evidently does. I'm complaining about your habit of attaching your implausible claims about wild conspiracy theories and non-existant technologies to stories which contain plausible claims made by named individuals with some public credibility. If you want to make claims about your various theories, do some research, read the literature and write a story backing it up with references to credible peer-reviewed publications. Don't simply assert that it exists and attempt to attach it to a completely different situation. It damages a story's credibility when it is associated for readers with wildly speculative claims and it doesn't help indymedia in any way. Posturing as an expert while making claims that even I, who am certainly not an expert, can identify as bullshit, just detracts from the credibility of you, the story and the site.

I'm also complaining about your habit of quibbling endlessly over minor details regardless of whether you are right or blatantly wrong, as in this case.

Please stop.

by JM Mon Apr 02, 2007 22:09 Rossport

Thanks for that Jungle Man, but I'd be quite happy with clean air, clean water and peace and quiet in a safe home with my family and friends.

by Jungle Man - s2s Mon Apr 02, 2007 21:36 rossport

Hi There Fella

John Monaghan our PR man posted this string on the 29/03/07.John would not publish any thing which could not be substantiated by himself or others. John only speaks of the truth and although he has little or no expertise in this field it does not deter him to dig and publish his findings to educate the wider community of eriss and Ireland. John monaghan is the ture leader of the campaign , once we achive victory over the invaders a statue of john should be commissioned in honour of what all he has done for our region. Great men are not made they are born.
The people of Erris involved in the ShellToSea campaign have for a long time assumed that phone calls were being monitored, and this suspicion rapidly increased during the incarceration of the Rossport Five.Most mobile phones now have beeps and clicks preceding a ringing signal, and usually have to be dialled more than once to get through at all. They also tend to ring briefly without showing a missed or received call.Landline phones regularly experience "crossed lines" that were rarely encountered before, and we even got one call to our house looking for Belmullet Garda station, and the numbers are nowhere near similar.On the plus side all this makes most calls much more entertaining, where you can leave messages for those oppressing us free of charge!
However, if Mark Garavan or Jerry Cowley are being monitored then it is indeed a sad day for Ireland, as they are both recognised as representatives, rather than protagonists, of an open campaign that doesn't hide it's actions.Big Brother seems to be watching a little too closely in our sleepy "democracy".

by me Mon Apr 02, 2007 21:20

It's great to have so many clever People on indy like the one above.

Firstly ,smart dust (passive)exists and is read by an active reader. I do not believe it is the biggest threat to freedom.

So ,what in your opinion is the real threat to freedom and what master plan would you propose to balance up the mess.

You say it is not practicable to have everyone's phone tapped but given today's tech.it is far from impossible.

Do you know how these few phones are tapped and from where? Being in the tech.business perhaps you could explain to us all how they do this so we can protect ourselves from being spied on.

My simple method is unplugging the wire when I talk of a lefty plan. Do you think I'm being paranoid or not doing the correct thing. Should I turn up the music instead?

by funny Mon Apr 02, 2007 20:47

"They pose a threat to the €400BILLION robbery and at the same time attempt to restore our Country to it's rightful People"

ANd do you have a plan to acheive any of the above?

by Hannibal Mon Apr 02, 2007 18:12

I think Chekov knows what he is writing about. Your pixie dust is just that - a fantasy. It makes for intereting science fiction though.

by me Mon Apr 02, 2007 18:02

Look, HANNIBAL. Check this stuff out for yourself.

I did'ent invent RFID , micro chips half the size of a grain of sand and the rest.

Go read.

by Chekov Mon Apr 02, 2007 18:00

"Smart dust is another method of tracking People who attend certain meetings. These are tiny passive or active chips that can be 'trailed' and are scattered upon non suspecting individuals."

Smart Dust does not exist. The various DARPA projects were talking about a hypothetical future which has not arrived yet, nor will it any time soon. You need to distinguish between futurology and what actually exists. Even if it were possible to make power supplies so small as to be unnoticeable to the eye (which it isn't - not even nearly), the range of the radio communications would be tiny - you would need to have sensors within centimetres - which is why the hypothetical uses of smart dust are within closed confines, such as manufacturing machinery.

For example, check out this press release about "ultra small UHF tags" [1] which announces "UHF tags smaller than any seen before - typically about 2.5 centimeters by 3 centimeters" and points out that their range is much smaller than typical pallet tags, which themselves only have a range of 3 metres.

I worked for several years on the M-Zones project [2], and currently work on a related wireless communication research project and one of the fields of ongoing research is miniaturization. Unless somebody has re-written the laws of physics without telling us, I can assure you that tracing people with "smart-dust" is simply science fiction and will remain so for the short-term future at least.

[1] http://www.idtechex.com/products/en/articles/00000003.asp
[2] http://www.mzones.org

by Hannibal Mon Apr 02, 2007 17:48

Some activists have their phones tapped, but not all. The sheer logistics make it impractible. Your pixie dust is a fantasy. Its your sort of nonsense which makes ordinary people ignore the very real threats to freedom.

by me Mon Apr 02, 2007 17:33

The resources for almost anything are there, paid for by the same People who are being moniitered.

The roof in the G.P.O. in the seventies was the nerve centre where phone calls were recorded.

Since then ,technology has advanced and millions of calls are stored on small discs , no real space needed. I think most of us are aware of at least some advances in technology and I would disagree with this awareness being labled 'paranoid schizophrenic'.

I really think any activist out there should make themselves aware of how far the surveillence technology has advanced.
There are many web sites out there with this information if you just look.

Smart dust is another method of tracking People who attend certain meetings. These are tiny passive or active chips that can be 'trailed' and are scattered upon non suspecting individuals.

Any Persons who challenge in any way , €400Billion of a freebee ,are very important People indeeed.
They pose a threat to the €400BILLION robbery and at the same time attempt to restore our Country to it's rightful People.

by WD40 Mon Apr 02, 2007 16:00

maybe we are not that important- but then again , there are hundreds of cops at Bellanaboy today, and these branchmen (and others) thought it important enough to follow and photograph a small group of activists engaged in a legitimate, peaceful protest in Dublin a few weeks ago
http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/mar2007/special_bra...1.jpg

So we must be important to someone.

by hotmail Mon Apr 02, 2007 15:47

ever hear of web-based email?
and buying a sim card for a tenner.
now kids please cop on!
You are not as important as you like to beleive

by Pyrus Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:57

It's something that I wonder about- where are the resources to monitor all these telephone conversations?

The fact is though, when they want to they can find the people and the time. If you look at the visible force on view at Bellanaboy this morning for instance, that gives you an idea of how big an operation this is. And that's just the physical manifestation of the operation- the bigger political force is invisible.

I have no doubt that there are taps on some phones associated with the Shell to Sea campaign and some activists are under surveillance. It's also certain that some places are bugged. I would normally be a bit skeptical about this (after all, it's a peaceful, legitimate, and popular campaign), but I've seen compelling evidence that this is so.

While it's fairly straightforward to avoid these measures, they do make it more difficult for activists in Cork or Dublin or Belfast to keep in touch with the people in Mayo. And of course that's one of the reasons why they do it...

by Hannibal Lector Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:59

Disconnectioning your phone like that would display the first signs of Paranoid Schizophrenia. There is no evidence that all conversations in the home are recorded. Just thinking about the logistics of it would show how ridiclious the very idea is. Where would all of these conversatins 24/7 be stored? Who would assess them?

If you have any evidence then produce it.

No doubt "me" will now say that I am trying todiscredit him/her/it because I work for the Irish National Security Agencey.

by me Mon Apr 02, 2007 09:12

One of the real smart things to do is disconnct your land line every time you have a lefty conversation in your Home as the Telephone itself IS a two way system.

Conversations in all Homes are automatically recorded on disc.
That is now a matter of routine.

Tony Gosling had a very interesting Article on the subject some years ago and is worth a read , it was entitled 'a Telephone is a micro phone in every Home'.

I don't think we should all be paranoid , but just accept this technology as fact and take proactive measures to protect ourselves. Just unplug the line.

by GUBU Mon Apr 02, 2007 06:35

Ah would ye ever cop on, ye flutes.
Don't make me laugh - "a matter of grave concern".
Shure isn't "phone tapping" business as usual in the FF-governed banana republic.
Did ye never hear of Sean Doherty ?

by cynic Sun Apr 01, 2007 21:31

Or it could be a PR stunt to deflect from his ratings in the polls!

by Seamus O'Bond Sun Apr 01, 2007 21:24

When will we ever get past this modern and tabloid style nonsense of converting conditional words like "could" "maybe" or "possibly" into facts without the evidence ?

If your 'phone was bugged on the presumption that you have something interesting to say why not play double-bluff ?

Firstly, you could feed duff intelligence to your eavesdropping enemies through your 'phone to throw them off your trail.

Secondly, you could set them up by pretending that you are going to do something really outrageous at a particular time and place e.g. rob a bank. You wait in a hedge nearby to see if the enemy turn up. If they do turn up then you know that they are eavesdropping.

I suppose it is a bit late now as the enemy probably know that you know that they know. If the enemy don't read that paper you're grand. Otherwise remember this for the next campaign.

by EYE Spy Thu Mar 29, 2007 13:23

Are plenty of people out there who can do counter surveillance and check your phone ,house,car for bugs taps etc.Even on the switchboards.Try under private investigators in the Yellow pages.
Or the most basic smart thing to do is ;if you need to say somthing sensitive to somone.Meet them in a nice noisey location,where you can just hear each other.Bitch to record a coversation there.

by Ciaron - Catholic Worker Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:33

Surveillance on the movement nonviolently resisting Shell in Mayo is predictable. If not state it could be corporate, it could be both.

In the mid-90's we had a small resistance community of Catholic Workers and East Timorese refugees based in Liverpool. Along with the larger more moderate Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), we were addressing British arms exports to Indonesia to be used against the people of East Timor.

In 1996, The Guardian revealed a former policewoman had been approached by Lancashire Special Branch to infiltrate the Catholic Worker meetings. She was offered £200 a meeting, bonuses for information on organisers, car, creche facilities and help if she was arrested during any civil disobedience. The woman had the integrity to go to The Guardian and go into a second meeting with Special Branch and tape it for a Guardian expose.

In 2001, The Sunday Times headlined with an expose that BAe had then approached a corporate intelligence service that ran six agents in CAAT and one in the extended community of the Liverpool Catholic Worker. The corporate spies had previously been used in the anti-roads movement in the mid-90's.

For a more detailed analysis of their behavior, go to to the following link.....
http://www.evel.nl/spinwatch/TRReport.htm

Shell like British Aerospace are a huge transnational corporation, their behavior and ideology have little to do with democracy or nourishing democratic freedoms.

by T Thu Mar 29, 2007 11:27

As many know, phone tapping is not a new thing in Ireland and one of the most famous cases goes back to the 1980s when Vincent Browne and other journalist had their phones tapped by the Haughy FF government.

In recent years there has been plenty of legislation passed that makes it quite easy for the State to tap peoples phones. In the last 25 years the nature of phone taps has changed as the telephone system has become fully digitized and now it is exceptionally easy for those with access to the system to tap phones at just the click of a mouse.

I recall a number of years ago a technical directive that equipment for tapping phones to be placed in every telephone exchange in all EU states. This seems to have come to pass judging by the report below.

In fact here is the text from the digital rights regarding recent EU directives for all member states to track the location of mobile phones, monitor IP address and tap phone:

Yesterday morning (14th December 2005) the European Parliament passed a Directive mandating member states to introduce surveillance of all European citizens in their daily lives....

..The Directive mandates that EU member states, including Ireland, are to track the location of all mobile phones, all calls made from land lines and mobile phones, as well as all information on individuals’ internet and email usage. This will include keeping records of all web sites visited, the senders and recipients of all emails and the use of any other Internet Protocol (IP) based communication such as the increasingly popular Voice over IP (VoIP) phone providers such as Skype.


But it already quite bad as the same report says:

..Ireland has already had surveillance of this kind for some years. The existing rules required details of telephone use and mobile phone location to be stored for three years. This was initially introduced in secret in 2002, and was placed on a statutory basis only this year, by way of a last-minute amendment to pending legislation. This amendment was introduced without prior warning or consultation, and rushed through with little debate.

However, this European law goes further. It extends monitoring to cover all internet use. It will require Internet service providers to record details of every email you send and every web page you visit. The Directive requires this information to be kept for a minimum of 6 months, but allows national governments to adopt longer periods if they wish. The Irish Government already requires your telephone records to be held for 3 years and seems set to apply the same to these new areas.

In addition, this law, since it was adopted in Europe, is immune from challenge under our Constitution. No Irish judge will be able to decide whether this law amounts to a breach of the constitutional right to privacy. Digital Rights Ireland is concerned that our Constitutional rights can be evaded so easily.


For more details of the Orwellian cloak being cast over us all, read the rest of the report at the URL below.

So there can be no doubt that phone tapping is taking place and is probably far more widespread than the writer above suspects.

by cagey b! - tnc corcaí Thu Mar 29, 2007 09:32

why then? whenever a day of action was proposed the gardaí knew exactly where to be that morning - especially when we were actually blocking trucks on the bridge of the "shell highway" - none of this was discussed at the glenamoy meetings! - a certain house in mayo which i have frequently stayed at - which is highly involved is most certainly tapped - i have no doubt about that - and i am far from paronoid - or maybe its just the phone fairies - the same ones that were ringing a certain minister with death threats and seemed to mysteriously disappear in the media mist which is currently clouding the news such as issues like tara and actions at the ard fheis which don't seem to exist in corporate media - darby mcdowell and the little people maybe! bígí cúramach!

by all phones Thu Mar 29, 2007 08:56

"Most mobile phones now have beeps and clicks preceding a ringing signal, and usually have to be dialled more than once to get through at all. They also tend to ring briefly without showing a missed or received call."

My phone is the same, but I dont fool myself into thinking I am being bugged (phone your mobile operator).
did you ever consider, someone ringing you looking for the gardastation, was a practial joke?

by JM Thu Mar 29, 2007 00:53 Rossport

The people of Erris involved in the ShellToSea campaign have for a long time assumed that phone calls were being monitored, and this suspicion rapidly increased during the incarceration of the Rossport Five.

Most mobile phones now have beeps and clicks preceding a ringing signal, and usually have to be dialled more than once to get through at all. They also tend to ring briefly without showing a missed or received call.

Landline phones regularly experience "crossed lines" that were rarely encountered before, and we even got one call to our house looking for Belmullet Garda station, and the numbers are nowhere near similar.

On the plus side all this makes most calls much more entertaining, where you can leave messages for those oppressing us free of charge!

However, if Mark Garavan or Jerry Cowley are being monitored then it is indeed a sad day for Ireland, as they are both recognised as representatives, rather than protagonists, of an open campaign that doesn't hide it's actions.

As a TD Dr. Cowley must surely be protected from such an intrusion, especially when he is also a medical doctor actively engaged with his patients.

Big Brother seems to be watching a little too closely in our sleepy "democracy".