The Irish Independent and other newspapers report that the Gardaí didn’t bother to investigate leads passed on to them by their Austrian counterparts. The leads are said to have included IP addresses of the people allegedly involved.

What is the point in data retention, if you don’t bother following up leads?

According to the Irish Times yesterday, it will now be very difficult to follow up these leads, even though the relevant traffic data has almost certainly been retained. They probably have other problems though:

- an investigation leading to a prosecution on the basis of retained data would quite likely be unconstitutional

- all the corroborating evidence (i.e., hard drives with incriminating material) has already been destroyed after the public hoo-hah