Fear of EU secret sell-out to Bush's surveillance society (Newham Borough Liberal Democrats)

Newham Borough Liberal Democrats <info@libdems.org.uk>

Fear of EU secret sell-out to Bush's surveillance society

December 11, 2008 2:45 PM
Originally published by Sarah Ludford MEP

Leading EU justice and home affairs ministers are meeting in Washington tomorrow

with their counterparts in the Bush administration. High on the agenda are data-sharing for fighting crime and terrorism, and what data protection safeguards should accompany it.

Already the US has successfully demanded the transfer of booking information on all air passengers flying the Atlantic and from January will require that all travellers (including Britons and other Europeans who do not need a visa) fill out a prior online application called an ESTA. They are now seeking access to European countries' DNA and fingerprint databases.

London MEP Sarah Ludford, Liberal Democrat European justice & human rights

spokeswoman said:

"I fully support appropriate and targeted data exchange and other law enforcement cooperation to catch real criminals and terrorists. But a binding legal agreement on transatlantic data protection providing clear definition of the use to which data can be put and who gets access as well as strong oversight and redress for misuse, is an essential prerequisite of any further data transfer."

"The Bush administration's Big Brother policies of mass surveillance and data-mining to identify persons fitting an assumed terrorist or criminal 'profile', have faced increasing criticism from within the United States, and it would be unacceptable for the EU to permit Bush to succeed in illegitimately imposing these dangerous and illiberal policies on us."

"Last week's judgment of the European Court of Human Rights that the UK's DNA database went too far in including innocent persons was a welcome reminder that our governments cannot negotiate away our human rights in the international arena. This ruling may well have put the spanner in the works of EU plans to share sensitive personal information."