Irish Council for Civil Liberties: Police Surveillance North and South - Thursday 24 October @ 9am, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland 6 Kildare Street D02 E434 Dublin 2

Event Overview

Join the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) and the Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ) for an extensive conference looking at the issues of surveillance and oversight in policing in the North and South.

Speakers include:

• Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney (investigative journalists)
• Baroness Nuala O’Loan, First Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland, 1999-2007
• David Kaye, former UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion, 2014-2020
• Prof. Marie Breen-Smyth, Independent Reviewer of the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 and Independent Reviewer of National Security Arrangements for Northern Ireland
• Dr Abeba Birhane, Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at Mozilla Foundation and Adjunct Lecturer/Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin School of Computer Science and Statistics
• Jonathan Hall KC, UK Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation
• Alyson Kilpatrick BL, Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
• Dr Daragh Murray, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University School of Law
• John Wadham, Human Rights Advisor, Northern Ireland Policing Board

The keynote plenary will discuss the human impact of covert surveillance and the lack of international legal regulation on the matter, with inputs from Barry McCaffrey, Trevor Birney, Baroness Nuala O'Loan and David Kaye.

There will be panel discussions on:

• Facial recognition technology (FRT), in light of the proposed expansion of tracking and monitoring under the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) Bill 2022 and the proposed Garda Síochána (Digital Management and Facial Recognition Technology) Bill 2023 (still unpublished)
• Covert surveillance, with a focus on the experience in the North given the lack of legal framework regarding covert surveillance in the South.
• Policing oversight bodies as a means of accountability. There is currently no independent body for oversight of national security in Ireland. In recommending the establishment of such a body, the Commission on the Future of Policing specifically referred to the equivalent body in the UK as a best practice. We are concerned that the proposed Independent Examiner of Security Legislation in the Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill 2023 is a weaker version of such an oversight body. We are inviting experts to discuss how Ireland could create an Independent Examiner with sufficient powers to ensure robust compliance with human rights law.

Register today for your free ticket.

ICCL’s ‘Policing for Peace’ project is supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. This event is supported by the Community Foundation and Community Foundation Northern Ireland programme.

Click here to register for this event