As everyone will know by this stage, the Irish establishment is very much down on “disinformation.”
As part of this, the Government has brought forward the Digital Services Bill (2023) which is up for debate on Wednesday.
This seeks to embody EU Regulation 2022/2065 whose intent is to crack down on said disinformation by empowering national authorities to conduct investigations into online disinformation and to initiate prosecutions where companies or individuals are found to be in breach of the Regulation.
Like much of Irish state law, it is merely the adoption of legislation decided by the mother ship. Brussels is the new Whitehall.
In the Irish state, the “competent authority” is proposed to be Coimisiún na Meán, the Digital Services Coordinator. The Bill proposes to provide An Coimisiún with pretty extensive powers.
More of that anon, when we look at what the supporters, and even more extreme proposers of online monitoring, wish to achieve when we examine the debate and amendments to the Bill.
What concerns us for the moment is who exactly will be responsible for all of this monitoring of ‘disinformation’?
The Commission itself, in common with a whole plethora of state agencies, appears to propose to basically contract out the day to day business of monitoring and what not by “certifying independent out- of-court dispute settlement bodies to resolve issues between users and platforms, awarding the status of trusted flagger to organisations so that those organisations’ contacts about illegal content can get priority treatment by online platforms, and vetting researchers looking for access to data held by very large online platforms and search engines.”
And who might day be? Well, you will already know from previous reports on Gript that the main and self-appointed such monitors include a small number of NGOs who make their living by attempting to decide who gets to use social media for the purposes of public discourse, and who perhaps ought to be restricted in such use.
And what of Coimisiún na Meán? It was established under the terms of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act (2022) and its members were appointed by the Minister with responsibility for the media, Catherine Martin, in March this year.
The current commissioners are Jeremy Godfrey, Celene Craig, Niamh Hodnett, Rónán Ó Domhnaill and John Evans.
Craig is CEO of the Broadcasting Authority; Hodnett was previously with the National Lottery and ComReg; Ó Domhnaill has been An Coimisinéir Teanga since 2014; and Evans was also previously with the communications regulator, ComReg. All pretty predictable backgrounds for persons appointed to such state bodies.
The Executive Chairperson, Jeremy Godfrey, has a rather more interesting Curriculum Vitae. While he too comes from ComReg, via the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, he was previously employed by the government of Hong Kong as its Chief Information Officer between 2008 and 2011.
He also previously worked at a high level in the British civil service, and so joins quite an impressive list of such former Crown employees now entrusted with sensitive positions in the Irish state.
He worked between 1984 and 1989 as Private Secretary to a number of Conservative Party Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry.
When Godfrey is described as having worked for the Government of Hong Kong, it ought to be borne in mind that the government of the former colony has been appointed by the Chinese Government since the treaty that began the transfer of authority over the former British colony to China in 1997.
Since that time, the formal commitment to allow Hong Kong retain a semblance of democratic accountability has been gradually eroded, with successive restrictions being imposed including bans on pro-democracy parties, the extension of the powers of the Chinese police and increased censorship.
Given that Godfrey lists on his CV covering his time in Hong Kong, his having had responsibility for managing the e-Government programme and other Government IT programmes, for internet governance, digital inclusion and promoting safe use of the Internet,” it would not be unreasonable to wonder what his attitude was to the growing censorship and restrictions was.
While Godfrey’s period as Government Chief Information Officer preceded the more intensive repression of more recent years, there were already signs that the administration and other sections of the local elite were happy to be seen not to be annoying the Chinese Communist Party.
Given that much of the debate around online disinformation and restrictions now is allegedly focused on preserving the integrity of the “news” it is interesting that the vast majority of journalists in Hong Kong believed that press freedom had greatly deteriorated over the period that Godfrey had been in office.
There had been successive attempts by the Hong Kong government to introduce measures, such as the public broadcasting review in 2005, that were perceived as attempts to impose censorship.
A June 2012 poll had found that 87% of more than 600 Hong Kong journalists felt that press freedom had deteriorated and 92% of that was attributed to the tightening of government controls.
No aspersions are being cast on Jeremy Godfrey or any other member of Coimisiún na Meán. However, it is important that anyone in such a powerful position as that is clearly designed to be under the current and proposed legislation is fundamentally committed to the principle of freedom of discourse as the paramount concern.
Others who it seems might be given auxiliary powers if the Bill is approved have made no pretence but that they are ideologically motivated and that this defines their entire concept of what constitutes “disinformation.” That is a matter of record. They have a political interest in suppressing dissenting views.
A government appointed authority can have no such suspicions surrounding it.