No Ethics In Big Tech — Jurisdiction Series, Part Three of Four
Published 22 August 2026 · ForeverPeaceNow.com / NoEthicsInBigTech.com
This is the third of four jurisdiction posts. Ireland is the one where I have to tell you something you may not want to hear, which is that the best statutory language in Europe sits behind a gate nobody outside the Director of Public Prosecutions can open.
The statute is close to perfect
Section 8 of the International Criminal Court Act 2006 makes it an offence to do any act specified in Article 25(3) of the Rome Statute. It does this by direct reference — so Article 25(3)(c), aiding, abetting or otherwise assisting in the commission of a crime, including providing the means for its commission, is Irish criminal law in the Rome Statute’s own words.
Providing the means. That is the phrase. Nowhere else in Europe does the statutory text map so exactly onto the conduct in question, and no translation into a differently worded domestic provision is needed.
Sections 7 and 8 apply to any person, with no nationality or residence qualification. Where the conduct happened in Ireland, that is ordinary territorial jurisdiction. No universal jurisdiction argument is needed and none should be made.
And then section 9(2)
No proceedings under the Act may be taken except by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
That is the whole thing. You can put material before the Gardaí. You can put it before the DPP. You cannot compel a prosecution, you cannot appeal a refusal to a court the way you can in the Netherlands, you cannot proceed privately the way a Spanish citizen can, and the DPP does not ordinarily give reasons.
Ireland has also never prosecuted anyone under the 2006 Act. Not once. There is no specialised unit and no institutional muscle memory.
So my honest recommendation is about sequence. Ireland should not be where this is first tested. File it after a Dutch or French process has produced findings, so the DPP is being asked to follow a developing European position rather than to originate one alone.
The route that is actually moving
In December 2025 the Irish Council for Civil Liberties lodged a complaint with the Data Protection Commission against Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, alleging that its processing of personal data facilitates war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by Israeli military authorities in the occupied territories. The complaint says the company facilitated the removal of intercepted calls from EU servers to Israel, obscuring evidence of unlawful processing before investigations could begin.
It relies in part on whistleblower material from inside the company, was formulated with pro bono assistance from senior counsel, and is brought for data subjects including Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and EU residents in frequent contact with them.
That route needs no DPP consent, needs no criminal complainant, and has already produced a public evidentiary record. If you are coming to Ireland on this, look hard at whether your contribution is better spent supporting that than duplicating it. I would rather say so than pretend my memorandum is the main event here.
What I have and what I do not
I want to be precise about ParentsPlea. It is a casualty documentation resource built from Palestinian Ministry of Health data and independent research by my own team. It is not a register of testimony submitted by individual families and I will not describe it as one. It can support identifying victims, incidents and dates. It does not confer legal standing on anyone.
In Ireland that matters less than elsewhere, because the DPP gate means no complainant can force proceedings regardless of standing. What matters is the quality of what goes in front of the DPP.
One thing about who I am
I am a United States person. In September 2025 the US Treasury designated three Palestinian human rights organisations on the SDN list under Executive Order 14203, blocking their property in US jurisdiction and prohibiting transactions by US persons. I do not engage with those organisations and this project does not.
That constrains me, not Irish lawyers. Everything in the memorandum is built from published court decisions, published regulatory filings and published journalism.
How to get the memorandum
The full memorandum — the section 7, 8, 9, 12 and 13 analysis, the DPP gate, the data protection route, the honest weaknesses, every source with a live link — is not posted publicly.
Use the contact form at NoEthicsInBigTech.com and ask for the Ireland memorandum. I will send it. I would rather it reached people who intend to use it than sat where anyone can scrape it.
The three things behind this work
The petition to the Spanish Government and Prosecutor’s Office — a record of global demand for investigation, and a separate instrument from the legal arguments in this series. Available via actionnetwork.org.
ParentsPlea.com — the casualty record, compiled from Palestinian Ministry of Health data and my team’s own research.
NoEthicsInBigTech.com — the book, the company fact sheets, and the underlying research corpus.
As of 5 August 2026 the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported 73,381 people killed and 174,231 injured in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, including 1,254 killed since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025, with an unknown number of victims remaining beneath rubble or in areas emergency responders have been unable to reach. Independent peer-reviewed research published in The Lancet Global Health indicates that figure is a conservative floor rather than an overcount.
Research credit: legal research, source verification and drafting support by Claude (Anthropic). All sources checked 22 August 2026. Not legal advice; I am not a lawyer.