Ireland spent years wooing America’s biggest tech companies – and now that’s threatening data privacy around the world. A POLITICO investigation
“We had an almost messianic zeal to bring jobs to Ireland,” Mone, who’s now retired and lives in Palo Alto, said in a telephone conversation.
But the basic argument — which remains Ireland’s unique selling point today, despite intensifying scrutiny of its tax practices by the European Commission — never varied: not having to hand over a significant portion of income to the Irish taxman. The pitch was so seductive that, over the next 30 years, Ireland morphed into what Mone calls “the 51st state of the United States.”
This welcoming atmosphere explains why Facebook, in particular, kept doubling down on its Irish presence throughout the 2000s, according to Sandy Parakilas, former operations manager for Facebook who left the company in 2012. Earlier in this decade, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission was headquartered in a tiny storefront. Meanwhile, Facebook's new headquarters showcase the company's outsized clout. | Niall Carson/Getty Images
"They didn't go anywhere near as far as you would have hoped," Parakilas said, referring to the Irish commission. Parakilas, who left Facebook in 2012, added that he doubts Ireland’s approach to regulation has changed substantially.Asked whether Ireland had done enough to stop the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Doyle said the commission had gone as far as it could,
Gary Davis did not respond to repeated requests for comment and a spokesperson for Apple, where Davis now works, did not respond. According to emails obtained by the Irish Independent via Freedom of Information requests, Sandberg wanted to know that Hawkes’ successor would be “as strong as” he had been in the role. But if the wrong choice was made, Sandberg suggested, there would be consequences for Ireland’s attractiveness as a destination for tech investment.
Instead, he said, Dixon was chosen to supervise the DPC’s development into a more substantial regulator than the one housed above a convenience store in Portarlington, building a bureaucratic structure rather than targeting specific issues. “I do believe that constructive engagement is incredibly important to build that trust,” she said. “Sticks and enforcement — that doesn’t create the best behavior in the marketplace.”
While the Irish regulator said it would examine the implications of such a merger, France echoed the German concerns. But those dollars could disappear if regulators interfere with the tech giants’ ability to collect and hold that information. "They are analyzing every photograph, even those where they don’t have permission, and their argument is this is not processing biometric data because they don’t take the final step of identifying the person,” said Dublin-based privacy lawyer Simon McGarr. “From a privacy standpoint, this is cloud cuckoo land.”
In the following months, Facebook was rocked by a series of scandals, data breaches and PR disasters that included Zuckerberg being grilled by lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic, and The New York Times revealing the firm had hired a public relations firm to attack critics, including by such dubious tactics as linking them to Hungarian-born investor George Soros.
For Daragh O’Brien, whose Castlebridge consultancy routinely carries out privacy audits on companies, not sending an officer to Facebook is the equivalent of “police investigating a crime from the doughnut shop.”
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