On the 6th November, the European Commission is to propose (pdf warning) that data is collected on anyone flying into or out of the EU. The data to be collected is almost exactly the same as that being collected under the controversial EU-US PNR scheme. Every passenger’s data is to be subject to a “risk assessment” which could lead to questioning or refusal of entry. The data is to be kept for 5 years (EU-US scheme is 7 years) and then for a further 8 years in a “dormant” database (the same as the EU-USA scheme).

It should be noted that this is a proposal for legislation by the Commission which the Council - in its secret working parties - can change at will (and ignore European Parliament’s opinion under “consultation”).

So here we have another proposal from a non-elected body, which our elected representatives can’t change, which could be extended arbitrarily to include every EU citizen, and which places everyone under suspicion without any right to know how the data is being used or to whom the data is given for further processing.

Democracy’s great, isn’t it?

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Dictatorship, EU. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.