Foreign states and data tapping

Sir, – Further to Karlin Lillington's "State sanctions phone and email tapping" (Front Page, December 6th), one might be forgiven for forgetting that one of the main responsibilities of our Government is to defend our sovereignty. Therefore it is with alarm that we should react to the Minister for Justice signing away, with the stroke of a pen, and without any public debate, our control over our cyberspace. What next, our airspace?

It is even more shameful when one considers, as revealed by Edward Snowden, that a foreign power had already pre-empted this surrender by taking onto itself the right to spy on our cyberspace without any legal provision being in place. So they infringe on a part of our sovereignty and our response is to give it away to them? Some way to start our commemorations of 1916. – Yours, etc,

MIKE SCOTT,

Ballybough,

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Dublin 3.