Senior policy officer in the area of surveillance and human rights with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Olga Cronin, has described a move by An Garda Siochana on Tuesday to release online images of 99 people they wished to identify as “a significant outsourcing of police work.”
“Our concerns are that there could be unintended consequences to this. And people have a right to presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial,” she told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
Ms Cronin acknowledged that gardaí had the right to use the resources and tools to do their work, but this was a departure and was different in terms of scale and reach and the consequences, she said.
“What’s happening here is members of the public en masse have been asked to look at these images and who do you think those people are?”
There was a possibility that some people would take things further and what would happen if people were to take the law into their own hands, she asked.
“What if the Garda accidentally put some of these people’s safety at risk?”
Ms Cronin asked if the risks to the individuals identified in the images had been mitigated by the gardaí. “They should have done a data protection impact assessment which would outline the risks and steps to mitigate those risks. And we would very much welcome it if they could publish that DPIA to allay people’s concerns.”
