According to the Danish Newspaper Berlingske Tidende the Vice-President Franco Frattini, EU Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security wants all EU citizens to give their fingerprints upon arrival to the European Union:
"It is to ensure us against terror and illegal immigration," he claims.Another thing is that the police must have better access to data about the travellers on plains.
Americans, Africans and everybody else, who do not live in the Union will have to stick their finger ahead if they want to travel into the secure area of the European Union. And the Union will not stop with fingerprints, but will also in the future use iris-scan or record of voice.That means the European Union will copy the system of America, who at this moment have more than 77 million fingerprints in their computers.
Abuse of data
"We have no idea if this will prevent terror, but we do know that there will be collected lots of personal data - and these data can be abused if they fall into the wrong hands," Danish politician Christel Schaldemose claims.The European Union is also thinking about using the so-called PNR-data from all passengers. PNR-data is data sucs as e-mail-addresses, credit card numbers, choice of food and private phonenumbers.
Success in the States
Some might claim that this is going to far. But in America similar systems has been used to catch more than 1800 people trying to get into the States without being allowed to go there. These are people who have an international search warrant over their heads or they have been convicted as criminals in the United States.
What do you think?
Is this some kind of new Echelon, where the national governments are trying to figure out all what the citizens are doing, and will use it against us?Should we believe the threat from terror? And do you believe that these kind of systems will make the world a better place to be (or have the bad guys won when they make our world much more difficult to live in)?
/Mikkel
Thursday, October 4, 2007
EU wants your finger
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4 comments:
The UK seems to have followed this trend with the development of the National DNA Database. According to The Times "there are 4.1 million people whose DNA is recorded on the police computer, more than in any other country."
While I think this information can help when it comes to tracking down criminals, I don't think all EU citizens should have their DNA recorded. Collecting DNA from all citizens implies that the Union regards all its population as a potential threat. What happened to the fundamental right of presumption of innocence?
Criminals should be tracked down and watched closely when reintegrating society - this is an area where a DNA bank can be helpful – but the right to freedom of innocent people shouldn’t be sacrificed in the process.
I'm not sure to which extent terrorist attacks can be prevented. I'm not certain what are the best solutions to protect citizens' safety, but collecting so many people's fingerprints and DNA information seems quite a stretch into paranoia. The thought that this information might fall into the wrong hands is even more disturbing.
Instead of focusing so much on individuals, I believe the EU should invest more into securing infrastructures, especially in the transportation sector, and into reaction tactics to respond to such catastrophes.
It's maybe fatalistic of me to say so, but if a group of terrorists wants to cause harm, it will find a way to do it. We should make sure that we are equipped to respond to these terrible events and not just store so much personal information, which could cause more harm to individual liberty than good to the society.
Well, is this new system for all EU citizens or for people from abroad who want to travel to the EU?
In America, there is no giant log of fingerprints. At least not one that I'm in. It's only for criminals.
But, if the proposed EU system is only for people traveling to and within the EU, then that is a little different. I don't know what the American immigration process is like...but I bet it involves a lot more than fingerprints.
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