Irish Politician: Data Retention Is Good If You Have Nothing To Hide... But Don't Ask For My Data

from the apparenly-you've-got-something-to-hide dept

Thanks to reader eoinmonty for alerting us to the news that Ireland is debating a new data retention bill that seems to have similar problems to many other data retention bills: which is that it pays little attention to individual privacy rights or the fact that retaining the data is a costly mess for communications companies, and having all that data tends to make it more difficult to actually find the useful data. But a bigger point worth mentioning is the sheer hypocrisy of some supporting the bill. For example, politician Niall Collins trotted out the bogus "if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" line that is a sure sign a politician doesn't know what he or she is talking about. As if to prove the point, Collins was then asked if he would be willing to provide his mobile phone bills and data on his email usage for the past two years (as the bill requires) he claimed not to understand the question and then refused to do so. Obviously, based on his own logic, we can only conclude that Niall Collins has something to hide.

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