The Irish people are one of the most monitored in the world according to research by Surfshark shows that shows the State requested information on more than 20,000 Irish accounts between 2013 and 2021 ranking the Irish government more paranoid about its own citizens than Russia or Israel.
The requests were made to Apple, Mata, Google and Microsoft the Irish Times reported.
Citing national security interests at risks, the Irish government, can order social media companies to produce data on an individual’s online social media accounts.
TD and Chair of the Oireachteas Justice Committee James Lawless said Ireland is one of the most surveilled online populations in the world.
“People’s accounts and all the rest of it is being mined on request – most likely from law enforcement looking for information,” he said.
“Because of the convenience that [the internet] brings – online shopping prompting to you buy something because it’s in your style or Netflix saying, ‘you probably want to see this programme next because it matches your preferences’ – it makes life easy for us – but it surrenders a lot of the privacy we might have enjoyed up until then.”
Deputy Lawless said: “As a world we need to decide if we’re comfortable with that.”
“I think recently we’ve actually stood back a bit and said we’re not and that’s why we began to look at the trade off and ask if we need to introduce better protections.”, the TD added.
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