Warning on spread of state surveillance

Richard Norton-Taylor
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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Source: Raiders News Updates ...
http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story.htm


Cheers, Steve...

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