Ireland is not a British isle. Irish police are unarmed and the country is not a surveillance state. However, there have been some high profile cases of murders committed by drug gangs who have used encrypted phones to put their communications beyond scrutiny / use in evidence. Ireland is a democracy and the public is perfectly able and willing to change govt if it sees fit (and it does so regularly). I think you'll find that in Ireland the people wonder WTF is wrong with the US that it could elect a cretin like Donald Trump to its highest office, denies healthcare to its citizens, tolerates vote suppression, electoral gerrymandering, mass shootings, endless racially motivated police assassinations, unlimited corporate expenditure in political campaigns etc. Ireland is fully signed up to the EU's GDPR which puts citizen's data rights on a far firmer footing than those of Americans.
>The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Hebrides and over six thousand smaller islands.
> In Ireland, the term "British Isles" is controversial, and there are objections to its usage. The Government of Ireland does not officially recognise the term, and its embassy in London discourages its use.
The term "encrypted phone" is meaningless and stupid. Do you use imessage, whatsapp, signal or any chat app that is currently thought of as "good" by tech or privacy people? Then you have an "encrypted phone". Does your phone have a lock code that is not easily hackable? Then you have an "encrypted phone".
It'd be hard to find any person using a smartphone whos phone is not "encrypted".
