McDowell admits gathering data on Irish citizens and giving it to the USA

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday November 30, 2002 01:47 by Phuq Hedd

Conor Sweeney in the Indo reports from EU 'Justice' meeting in Brussels

The Independent requires a login with cookies, so I'm reposting this in full for those that don't want to register. Meanwhile there were assurances from government that the new spy-bill (Telecommunications Retention of Traffic Data Bill) http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=879019&issue_id=8414 which stores records of our phone, email and fax for 4 years would _increase_ our security!

McDowell defends intelligence links with US agencies

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell has defended the exchange of intelligence information between Ireland with the US which, he said, had been going on for 50 years.

At the second day of an EU justice ministers' meeting in Brussels, ministers were due to agree possible terms for the exchange of information between US agencies and Europol, which co-ordinates intelligence gathering for EU states.

However, this was taken off the agenda pending clarifications, requested by some countries.

States such as the Netherlands, France, Spain and Germany are deeply concerned that civil liberties could be breached by the exchange and that they would have little control over how the US would use the information on European citizens.

Mr McDowell defended the exchange of intelligence with the US, which had been going on for 50 years and was now more vital than ever, in the battle against international terrorism.

"Irish and British security services would always have informal arrangements with the US and other friendly services that did not require a formal agreement.

"It's nothing new as far as we're concerned, it's been like that for 30 to 50 years," he said.

It would be naive to think that security services would have powers to intercept and exchange intelligence gathered from traditional methods of communication and not the internet, he argued, particularly as this had been widely used in the September 11 attacks.

Conor Sweeney in Brussels