So the question isn’t really ‘Where’s the Irish EFF?’ because we can’t have an EFF here. Rather it should be ‘What would an Irish Digital Rights organisation do?’

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As co-chair of the ICCL, I just wanted to respond to Colm MacCartaigh’s post where he said it was “unbelievably depressing” that the ICCL weren’t interested in the E-voting issue.

In the whole NGO/campaigning area resources are very tight and it simply makes no sense to duplicate what another organisation is doing. We are interested in E-voting (and I sent in a personal submission to the Commission on Electronic Voting) but the reality was that on this issue there was already a lobby group (Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-Voting) who were active in the area, and were highly effectively.

In general privacy/technical issues will never be a major priority for the ICCL but we will deal with the most significant threats. So, in the recent past, we’ve worked on telecoms data retention, ID cards, DNA database, CCTV, data protection in general and drug testing in the workplace. However, there’s definitely room for an organisation focussed solely on these issues. ICCL is not in a position to do this and the funding just isn’t there.

I chatted with Damien on e-mail about the EFI idea and I think it makes sense that something like EFI should exist here. The ICCL would welcome this and I’ve offered to help (in a personal capacity). However, I think a lot of thought needs to be put into how its structured and its mission. In my experience for the kind of political lobbying that is involved in this area (where you are often up against the Department of Justice) to be effective, a lot of planning and research into international parallels/cases needs to be done.

I would still say that the issue is always going to come down to funding.

I’m waiting for a phonecall back from someone on their Committee now.

There certainly is room for a dedicated organisation, even if that is an umbrella for others. Getting access to Government is hard, and lobbying is a lot of work. However the organisations mentioned represent a large ammount of contacts.

Funding can be complicated, once you recieve over 127 euro from any person or organisation you must register with the Standards in Public Office Commission, maintain accounts and so on. We (ICTE) have elected to maintain zero funding (our total expenses to date have been about 250 euro, on hiring a room in Buswells for a press conference)
for this reason.

Another hard part is obtaining Legal opinion. ICTE has many legal contacts, including Senior Council willing to argue a high court case if neccesssary, however these are busy people, who don’t want to get involved on a day to day basis, and yet hard legal opinion usually constitutes a huge part of the work that is neccessary.

Ireland isn’t known for leading-edge tecnical court cases, so not many solicitors/lawyers will get involved for the sake of making a name, which leaves genuine personal interest or money as the only reasons for getting involved.

Freestater has done a quick summary of all the IrishBlogs on the EFI idea Antoin and myself have been commenting on the post too. Antoin has posted his EFI views too on his site. While there is talk of funding,…