Privacy and Policing in Northern Ireland. Paper for ‘Human Rights and Northern Ireland’ Conference at Queen’s University Belfast, 27 September 2024 (work in progress) - John Wadham, Fiona Byrne

European Human Rights Law Review

This article is concerned with the right to privacy in relation to policing in the UK, in particular in the context of Northern Ireland. Rapid technological advancements represent a new ‘frontier’ of human rights protection, in particular privacy rights, and a specific concern of the authors is the apparent absence of consultation by the police, the DOJ, or the NIO on issues of privacy in relation to the governance of new capabilities, such as facial recognition technology. The data breach that occurred in 2023 and the ensuing investigation raised questions in relation to PSNI’s governance of sensitive data and have put officers and staff in danger.
Furthermore, the UK has since Brexit implemented legislation that seem to violate human rights principles. For example, a UK Home Office minister has stated that he intends to integrate the semi-automated facial search capability within the UK Police National Database (PND) with the UK Passport Office database containing images of 45 million UK passport holders. He also intends to allow Home Office forces to use facial recognition to compare CCTV images of suspects from volume crime scenes such as shoplifting against the UK passport database. Northern Ireland currently does not have the capabilities to deal with these privacy rights issues, and the authors are concerned that there seems to be an absence of public debate regarding whether these developments should be followed in Northern Ireland.
Firstly, the authors attempt to set out possible interactions between the PSNI and the public where people’s human rights are concerned. Examples are the police’s use of surveillance equipment; listening devices; informants (Covert Human Intelligence Sources); surveillance of social media and the websites that people visit; databases and the collection, retention, sharing and access to data about a person (including their fingerprints, DNA profiles and facial images); access to other UK databases; the increase in closed-circuit television (CCTV), cameras on drones and helicopters, automatic number plate recognition; extraction of information from digital devices; and facial recognition systems.
Secondly, the authors consider the systems of governance, control and regulation and the protections and remedies that are already in place or need to be in place to try to prevent abuse of privacy rights in the Northern Ireland context, such as a Biometrics Commissioner. And finally, the authors discuss the connection between privacy and policing in the context of Article 8 jurisprudence of the ECtHR and the UK courts.

Human Rights Review of Privacy and Policing

Northern Ireland Policing Board, July 2023

Co-authored with John Wadham, Human Rights Advisor to the Northern Ireland Policing Board
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More Human Rights: Protocols 4, 7 and 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 - John Wadham, Fiona Byrne

European Human Rights Law Review 2023, Issue 6

The ECHR’s Additional Protocols 4, 7 and 12 have never been ratified by the UK and are not included in the Schedule to the Human Rights Act 1998. This opinion piece suggests that the next government should remedy this. It also sets out part of the history to the Additional Protocols, what the rights in those Protocols include, a summary of the relevant jurisprudence and a brief note on what effect they might have in the UK. As an example, and in more detail, the prohibition on the collective expulsion of “aliens” is considered in the context of the recent Illegal Migration Act 2023.

Article available upon request.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence online - LLM Thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, June 2022

This dissertation provides a critical comparative analysis of three different jurisdictions (the United States, the European Union, and China) and their different modes of governance of online platforms regarding TFGBV, focusing on Facebook, TikTok, and Weibo. The empirical nature of TFGBV and a typology based on the current literature is established and structural effects of TFGBV are examined. I use Gorwa’s and Gillespie’s typologies of governance are to analyse modes of governance in the US, China, and the EU regarding content moderation of online platforms. Using an intersectional critical feminist lens, I compare primary legislation and academic literature on the governance of online platforms and undertake a critical reading of the written community guidelines of Facebook, TikTok, and Weibo. Different governance modes did not have a significant effect on efforts to combat TFGBV on platforms, although the implementation of the DSA in 2023 and its transparency requirements give some hope. The analysis unearthed the fundamental problem of private companies providing a public service without the necessary safeguards that go with it in democracies, and thereby deciding over issues of rights. Changing content moderation practices is therefore just the tip of the iceberg to curb TFGBV.

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