DNA data deal 'will create Big Brother Europe'
Pastor Dale Morgan
DNA data deal 'will create Big Brother Europe'*
By Philip Johnston and Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Last Updated: 2:04am GMT 16/02/2007
Police across the EU are to be given free access to Britain's DNA,
fingerprint and car registration databases in a move denounced last
night as the creation of "Big Brother Europe".
Fingerprint being scanned
Britain has the world's largest criminal DNA database
At a meeting in Brussels, the Home Office agreed to a deal that will set
up a network of national crime records across 27 states.
All member states will have access to other countries' DNA and
fingerprint data, as well as direct online access to vehicle registries.
The exchanges could be up and running as early as next year and might
eventually lead to the creation of a single Euro-wide database.
Police in one country will be able to find out whether another has data
matching the profile of a suspected offender.
But critics last night questioned whether access to the databases would
have the same security safeguards throughout the EU.
They also said British tourists fingerprinted in the UK as witnesses may
find themselves sucked into foreign police investigations after
innocently leaving prints, or DNA, at a location that later becomes a
crime scene.
British police have millions of fingerprints on file – and this number
will grow when they are taken for passport applications from 2009.
Britain also has by far the largest criminal DNA database in the world –
50 times the size of the French equivalent.
When Labour took office in 1997, it held only 700,000 samples. By next
year, it will hold the samples of some 4.2 million people – seven per
cent of the population – and is growing by about half a million a year.
The next largest DNA database in the EU is in Austria, where less than
one per cent of the population is included. Coverage in Germany is half
of that.
Britain gives its police greater freedom to obtain, use and store
genetic information than other countries, who remove the profiles if the
person is acquitted or not charged.
Civil liberties campaigners complain that the British database has
effectively become a "permanent list of suspects". It includes at least
140,000 samples from people never charged with any offence.
The DNA from nearly one million juveniles has been added over the past
decade.
David Heath, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, said: "While sharing
information about convicted criminals is obviously helpful to crime
prevention, it is quite another thing to be sharing information about
innocent citizens, and worse still to be sharing it without the approval
of either the UK or European parliaments."
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "The decision to share
broad categories of information across the enlarged EU is deeply
troubling. The information includes personal data, it is not limited to
criminals and there are no reliable means to guarantee the safeguards on
the use of that information by criminals gangs or those not entitled to
use that data."
He added: "At a time when the Government's failure to ensure the proper
registration of criminal convictions by British nationals in the EU is
the subject of investigation, it is astonishing that ministers are
proceeding with such a risky scheme without properly thinking through
the consequences or debating it properly in Parliament."
Syed Kamall, a Conservative member of the European Parliament's justice
and home affairs committee, said: "This convention may be useful for
landlocked countries that have relaxed their border controls, but it is
an unnecessary erosion of civil liberties for Britain".
He added: "Not content with a Big Brother Britain, our government is
allowing the creation of a Big Brother Europe. "
Gerald Batten, a London UKIP MEP, said: "This is the thin end of the
wedge and will lead to a European-wide database including all personal
details including DNA. It is the beginning of an Euro-wide, Big Brother
state."
However, the Government says the database is an invaluable detection
tool that should be shared.
Last year, Britain provided some 5,000 DNA profiles to the Dutch
authorities in a special programme.
Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's federal interior minister, said: "Our aim
is to create a modern police information network for more effective
crime control throughout Europe."