Complaint made to Data Protection over drones

WEXFORD County Council has come under fire this week for using surveillance drones during the Covid-19 lockdown without filing a privacy assessment. At the height of lockdown, when there were major concerns over people travelling from outside the county to visit, the council used the drones to monitor compliance at holiday homes, beauty spots and 68 caravan parks, with pertinent information being passed on to gardaí.

However, a data protection consultant has said that they are ‘absolutely stunned’ that the council did not carry out a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA), something which is a prerequisite under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation for any project that involves potential privacy implications. An official complaint has now been made to the Data Protection Commission over the lack of a DPIA in relation to the use of the council’s six UAV drones.

Data protection consultant and Wexford Resident Daragh O’Brien has filed the complaint and he has stated: ‘I am stunned that a local authority has not done a DPIA for the deployment of what amounts to a mass surveillance technology. It is not sufficient for their staff to ‘be aware of GDPR’ as one of the officials states in the correspondence released to me, they have to put it into practice,’

Yesterday (Monday), Wexford County Council said that they were not in a position to comment on the matter, however a meeting is scheduled to take place this week after which their position will be outlined.