Death by a thousand cuts
01 January 2001
EU DNA database to define "race" and "gender"?; EU-FBI: prohibition on the erasure of telecommunications data?; Plan for "global aparthied"; The "technologies of repression"; No freedom of information in the EU
The EU is planning to allow the exchange of DNA samples between its member states. Part of these discussions revolve around what data police and other agencies should be allowed to extract from the sample. Now it is being argued, by the Netherlands, that agencies should be able to extract data establish the "population group or race" and gender and, in time, an increasingly complete description of the "owner" (see feature page 22).
In the UK the Criminal Justice and Police Bill is to allow all DNA samples taken by the police to be kept in future - under the present law they are meant to delete data on people who are not charged or who are acquitted of an offence (and the police have failed to delete thousands of records). In addition, DNA data, like other police data, will be able to be exchanged with states and agencies outside the UK, including for "speculative searches" (see feature page 16).
Telecommunications surveillance
The EU-FBI telecommunications surveillance system too has taken a new turn. In the EU the Working Party on Police Cooperation wants to: "to prohibit the erasure or anonymity of traffic data". This is in response to the EU's planned Directive on data protection and privacy in telecommunications (phone-calls, e-mails, faxes, internet sites and usage). Like the police, security and intelligence agencies in the UK (see Statewatch, vol 10 no 6) the EU working party wants the "law enforcement agencies" to have on tap access to all communications - as distinct from being authorised to have access for a specific investigation (see feature on page 18). Plans are afoot too to expand the capacity and data categories held on the Schengen Information System (SIS). Like the planned "exchange" of DNA samples it is falsely claimed that the SIS simply "exchanges" data held at national level (see feature page 24).
“Global apartheid”
At the international level social democrat politicians (Labour/Socialists in the UK and EU) want to create a system of global apartheid. Defining all refugees and asylum-seekers as "illegal immigrants" they propose the creation of "detention centres" in the third world (with the likelihood of EU funding). People fleeing from hunger and poverty and persecution are to be held in the nearest transit/"safe country" (as defined by the EU) where any application for asylum would be considered. They will not set foot in the EU without permission. An EU report from 1998, prepared by the Austrian Presidency, indicated some of the likely transit/safe countries: for Somalia it is Kenya, for Morocco it is Algeria and Ceuta (Melilla), for Afghanistan it is Pakistan and Iran, and for Sri Lanka it is India (see Statewatch vol 10 no 3/4; www.statewatch.org/news/ NEWSINBR/ 05migration.htm)
The responsibility of EU governments for the export to the third world of the "Technologies of repression" is taken up by the OMEGA Foundation report for the European Parliament (see feature page 26).
Liberties, rights and democracy
Liberties and rights are the lifeblood of democracy. But for democracy to work civil society has to have access to the raw material - information on the policies and practices of governments and the state. This right too is under attack in the EU with a new code of access to documents destined to take away existing rights (see feature page 20).
Civil liberties and human rights established in the postwar (and Cold War) period have been under threat for more than a decade. Now, with little opposition in mainstream politics, they are under sustained attack. They will not disappear "at a stroke" but step by step, through "a thousand cuts".