Martin C. Barry reports: The NDP is sounding the alarm over a proposed new electronic communications monitoring law, which could end up giving police the power to track the geographical movements of people, while possibly also allowing them to freely scrutinize e-mail, without first having a warrant. Charlie Angus, the party’s MP for Timmins-James Bay…
Category: Laws
UK: Judges advise against too tightly defining privacy
Rachel McAthy reports: Leading judges today advised a parliamentary committee against trying to too “tightly” define areas of privacy law, suggesting instead that it “would be better to leave it to judges in the main”. Appearing before the joint committee on privacy and injunctions, Sir Nicholas Wall, president of the family division of the high…
Is illegally obtained CCTV footage admissible in evidence in Ireland?
TJ McIntyre writes: […] There is a general rule in Irish law that illegally (not unconstitutionally) obtained evidence may be excluded at the discretion of the court. Yvonne Daly provides a very good summary of this rule in this article (PDF), where she points out that in practice this discretion is very seldom used to exclude evidence on the…
IL: State says electronic messages from council meetings are public records
A reader sends in this pro-transparency ruling in Illinois: City officials must turn over electronic correspondence council members send and receive during meetings, regardless of what kind of media or means they use to do so, the state attorney general’s office said Tuesday. The legally binding opinion was sent to city officials and The News-Gazette…