An open letter to Minister Eamon Ryan about government proposals to require the registration of all mobile phones, and the frankly juvenile comments of a junior minister about their reasoning.

Minister,

I would like to formally object to the apparent plan being put together by your government to require the registration of all mobile phones. This is another – completely unnecessary – step the Irish government is taking on the slippery slope of privacy invasion.

I say completely unnecessary because the only people who /won’t/ be affected by this type of initiative are the people it’s supposed to target. And in highlighting them, your junior minister demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of privacy issues.

I hope both you and he will take the time to read this relatively short paper on the, frankly immature, “Nothing To Hide” argument.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

I would appreciate your confirmation that you won’t in fact be going ahead with any legislation or initiatives regarding this. It is, to be blunt, the kind of useless security theatre one would expect from the current US administration, or possibly fascist dictators.

We’re better than that.

Yours sincerely,
Adam Beecher

Also see posts by Fergus, Damien, Antoin, Daithí and TJ.

UPDATE: I received this reply from the Minister’s office on the 24th of July btw. Just an acknowledgement, no substance.

On behalf of Mr Eamon Ryan T.D., Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources I wish to acknowledge your email below, the contents of which will be brought to the Minister’s attention.

I sent a complaint to the junior minister too btw, but I don’t have a copy as I had to do it via a web form. Obviously he doesn’t have the testicles to post his email address on the web. I received no reply from him at all, surprise surpise.

UPDATE: The Minister responds.