Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 15 December 2020
462. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Justice the number of data access requests the special detective unit of An Garda Síochána has made to telecommunications and social media companies in the past three years to date in 2020 under the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011; the number of access requests that were approved and declined by the companies that the data was requested from; and the reason the data was sought. [43438/20]
View answerI am informed by An Garda Síochána that the breakdown requested by the Deputy with regard to the information provided in response to PQ No. of 754 of 24 November 2020 is not available.
I am advised that the available information as set out below cannot be disaggregated by reference to the number of requests made under the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011 by any one particular operational unit , as requests are not categorised in this manner.
The Deputy will recall that in response to the previous question, I provided the following information:
"I am informed by An Garda Síochána that the following statistics set out the number of data access requests made by An Garda Síochána to telecom companies in 2018 and 2019. I am further informed that the figures for 2020 will be prepared at year end and available early 2021.
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No. of data access requests made under the Communications (Retention of Data ) Act 2011 by year1 |
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2018 |
13,545 |
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2019 |
8,110 |
1 Note: These figures include requests by An Garda Síochána for subscriber data under the Data Protection legislation, as it was not possible within the timeframe for response to disaggregate this information for both of the years requested.
An Garda Síochána have in place internal procedures to ensure that requests are scrutinised prior to issue so as to ensure only valid requests are made to service providers, and where relevant data is known to exist.
It is important to state that the figures above do not represent the entirety of communications-related data that may be provided to An Garda Síochána, for example, under other enactments, search warrants or court orders.
The Deputy may also wish to be aware that access requests made to social media companies do not come within the remit of the Communications [Retention of Data] Act 2011 but are dealt with in accordance with Law Enforcement cooperation guidelines which have been put in place by the companies.
