Warning on spread of state surveillance

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1464412,00.html

 

Warning on spread of state surveillance

 

Richard Norton-Taylor

Thursday April 21, 2005

The Guardian

 

Governments are building a " global registration and surveillance

infrastructure " in the US-led " war on terror " , civil liberty groups

warned yesterday.

 

The aim is to monitor the movements and activities of entire

populations in what campaigners call " an unprecedented project of

social control " .

 

The warning came from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring

Group, including the American Civil Liberties Union, and Statewatch, a

UK-based bulletin which tracks developments in the EU.

 

They point to the system whereby all visitors to the US are to be

digitally photographed and fingerprinted. The EU has agreed that

member states must fingerprint all passport holders by the end of

2007. The information will be held on databases.

 

National ID cards, they warn, will become a " globally interoperable

biometric passport " . The setting up of airlines' passenger name

records (PNRs) could include more than 60 different kinds of

information, including meal choices which could reveal personal,

religious or ethnic affiliations.

 

The US and EU governments are expanding legal powers to eavesdrop and

to store the product of intercepted personal communications, the

groups warn.

 

They also point to an agreement between Europol - the EU's incipient

police headquarters - and the US giving what they say will be an

unlimited number of American agencies access to sensitive information

on the race, political opinions, religious beliefs, health and sexual

life of individuals.

 

The groups point to increasingly close cooperation between national

police, security, intelligence, and military establishments.

 

To achieve their ends, they say, governments have suspended judicial

oversight over law enforcement agents and public officials,

concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of the executive arm of

government, and rolled back criminal law and due process protections

that balance the rights of individuals against the power of the state.

 

These initiatives, say the civil liberty groups, are not effective in

identifying terrorists.

 

 

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