Dublin, 24 June 2019

Protecting certain groups from harmful content should not translate into totalitarian state structures capable of indiscriminate surveillance and censorship of our private communications.

At ICCL we are deeply alarmed by BAI’s proposals for internet regulation, including their proposals to access, monitor and censor the private communications of people living in Ireland. Such proposals ignore a long established body of human rights doctrine protecting our important rights including privacy, association, and expression.

We have spoken out before against overly broad regulation which might lead to censorship of legitimate forms of speech: https://www.iccl.ie/…/iccl-submission-digital-safety-commi…/

Like the BAI, we also made submissions to Department of Communications regarding best practices for online content regulation. However, our submissions place human rights analysis at the centre: https://www.iccl.ie/…/iccl-submission-to-the-public-consul…/