McGarr Solicitors

07/10/2017

This week, Simon was in Toronto, giving the keynote speech at an international technology convention.

His talk on surviving the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation was well received, with one attendee saying it was good “not to be left in despair” after the briefing.

08/09/2017

Simon recorded a live TheJournal.ie discussion of the Public Services Cards with Noel Whelan of the Irish Times. You can see how it went here:

https://youtu.be/P3kjfg6FZlo

After months of controversy, we're asking is the Public Services Card a major privacy pothole, or just a storm in a teacup? We'll discussed the changes with ...

23/08/2017

Public Service Cards were in the news today and Simon was asked on to RTE Radio 1's Drivetime to discuss their legal basis.

You can read about it in our new post: http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2017/08/23/public-services-card-id-database-id-card/

Examines the claimed lawful basis for the Public Services card. Finds that it doesn't say what the Department's spokesperson claims it does.

02/08/2017

Yesterday, Simon was back on Today FM's The Last Word, discussing the legal significance (and, post-GDPR, financial significance) of data collected by Irish technologist and designer Youssef Sarhan pointing towards strange correlations between topics discussed face to face and ads which subsequently appeared in people's Facebook feeds.

You can listen back to "Is your phone spying on you? here:

http://www.todayfm.com/The-Last-Word-with-Matt-Cooper/podcasts/75408/Is-Your-Phone-Spying-On-You

Could our phones be listening to our conversations? Technologist Yusuf Sarhan and solicitor Simon McGarr...

08/06/2017

Hello friends! A rare request for likes, shares and all.

Here is our new Data Protection Consultancy service. We're offering to take on the role of Data Protection Officer for companies getting ready for the EU's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018.

We're also offering a Gap Analysis service, where we'll draw up a report showing where you are now with your data handling and what you need to do in order to put your house in order before the GDPR deadline.

Any and all shares greatly welcomed!

http://www.datacomplianceeurope.eu

12/12/2016

Here is an interview we gave to Turkish Television News on the Microsoft warrant case.
https://youtu.be/MT-F_CFEAtM

U.S. Appeals Court rules Microsoft does not have to turn over emails to the U.S. Government in the case of data stored on servers outside the country. The ru...

30/08/2016

The HSE has launched a new document- their Open Health Data Governance Strategy.

Which is to say, it is the blueprint which should explain what medical records and data they plan to release to researchers (including commercially backed drug company researchers) from our medical files.

This is a very live issue internationally- with the UK having only recently scrapped their plans to create a single digital medical record for patients, and then share that data to 3rd parties.

We have already written on our website about some of our concerns with the HSE's Individual Health Identifier plan.
( see: http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2015/10/28/whats-the-prognosis-for-health-identifiers-after-bara/ )

However, if patients (which in the end means all of us) are to be moved to a single, digitally accessible eHealth record, we're going to need to see what- exactly- the HSE means when it says it will only share that data after being 'de-identified'.

After the Governor of Massachusetts collapsed on stage in 1996, his de-identified health records, which had been released as part of a dataset, were successfully re-identified by an MIT student using only public data to match his details. This eventually led to a law restricting release of medical data in the US.

It would be better for everyone if we knew what the HSE currently considers to be 'de-identifying'.

28/08/2016

This is our new client, Ensaf (13). She's a Syrian refugee who wants to meet up with her mother again. We're going to try to help her and her father.

You can read more about how Ensaf's family were seperated on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees site: http://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2016/8/57aca60a4/right-reunion-eludes-refugee-families-europe.html

And read why keeping them apart is contrary to the law, on our website here: http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2016/08/28/mcgarr-solicitors-representing-syrian-refugees/

28/12/2015

We'd like to be the first to wish you a Merry Void Journey.

26/12/2015

When you fall over backwards after Christmas dinner and can't breath for turkey.

Happy Christmas!

02/12/2015

From time to time, RTE's Fair City features trials and other forms of courtroom dramas. And, being careful sorts, the scriptwriters want to make sure they make the process both as dramatic- and as accurate- as possible.

So they call McGarr Solicitors and talk through the plans with Dervila McGirr. Who absolutely does not reveal the secret upcoming legal travails of the residents of Carrigstown until they burst onto the screen. Not even, despite requests, to her mother.

So we were particularly pleased to open today's post to find a welcome token of our efforts to bring law and order to Fair City.