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EU Privacy Technology

EU Votes To Create Gigantic Biometrics Database (zdnet.com) 212

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
The European Parliament voted last week to interconnect a series of border-control, migration, and law enforcement systems into a gigantic, biometrics-tracking, searchable database of EU and non-EU citizens. From a report: This new database will be known as the Common Identity Repository (CIR) and is set to unify records on over 350 million people. Per its design, CIR will aggregate both identity records (names, dates of birth, passport numbers, and other identification details) and biometrics (fingerprints and facial scans), and make its data available to all border and law enforcement authorities.

Its primary role will be to simplify the jobs of EU border and law enforcement officers who will be able to search a unified system much faster, rather than search through separate databases individually. "The systems covered by the new rules would include the Schengen Information System, Eurodac, the Visa Information System (VIS) and three new systems: the European Criminal Records System for Third Country Nationals (ECRIS-TCN), the Entry/Exit System (EES) and the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS)," EU officials said last week.
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EU Votes To Create Gigantic Biometrics Database More

EU Votes To Create Gigantic Biometrics Database

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  • yow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Monday April 22, 2019 @09:04AM (#58471082) Homepage
    Yow. On the one hand, EU enforces tyrannical privacy laws. On the other hand, they set up a massive violation of privacy.

    Pick one, EU.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The privacy laws of the EU are to restrict the power of private corporations, not to restrict the power of the state. There is nothing incongruent at all about leftists limiting the power of corporations whilst preserving their own.

      You're thinking about this the wrong way. Read Saul Alinsky's Rules of Radicals to understand the mindsets. Once you understand the mindsets and psyches, you will not be surprised.

      • Re:yow (Score:5, Insightful)

        by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Monday April 22, 2019 @09:48AM (#58471312)
        They restrict both the powers of state actors and corporations. The difference is that EU countries aren't allowed to end-run privacy rules by having privacy corporations collect data, then feed it to governments.

        • Re:yow (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22, 2019 @10:13AM (#58471450)

          Sure about that?

          https://www.salon.com/2013/10/26/12_other_governments_that_enjoy_spying_on_their_citizens_partner/

          Just a few in that list are part of the EU, but there are a bunch more.... was just the first hit on a search.

          "they" don't spy on their citizens... They let other governments spy on them and then make a deal to share intelligence data.. Same goes for the US...

          We have Wikileaks and Snowden to thank for letting a lot of this information be available to us peasant's..

    • Re:yow (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Monday April 22, 2019 @09:26AM (#58471192)

      On the one hand, EU enforces tyrannical privacy laws. On the other hand, they set up a massive violation of privacy.

      There is no contradiction in those from the EU's perspective - both massively enhanced the power of the EU government. It's not about making things better (or worse) for the citizens, it's about accumulating more power for the pols....

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by umghhh ( 965931 )
      I would like to get out two things. Not sure how border control plays in here. EU is not interested in border control. The activities of special Sophia mission shows that they are not. Flak that Orban got for securing southern flank (border to Serbia) and to lesser extent the activities around the the country that name EU changes fro time to time w/o asking its citizens and which is currently called Norther Macedonia show that the EU is not interested in border control. Maybe on the eastern flank - because

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        EU citizens have a chance to vote their frustration at or acceptance of EU in May.

        It makes no fucking difference. Shit, the UK voted to leave the entire corrupt morass and look what's happened.

    • All that information is already saved locally by national entity. All this do is allowed national entity to share info. The worst abuse that can comes , comes from local authority. Not from the EU.
    • In what way exactly is this a privacy violation? Pretty much all they are doing is connecting the existing databases so that they wouldn't need quite so large an army of bureaucrats playing data fetch robots. It doesn't change anything about what data is kept about people, nor what data is used by officials to do their job.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      Well, not really.

      Biometric data has been a controversial topic for a long time. And the collection of biometric data was introduced into the EU in 2004 on a national basis, still in the wake of the 9/11 political aftermath. You know, all that fluffy war on terror that has been used left and right to push otherwise questionable legislation.
      So this massive violation of privacy pre-dates the GDPR by 14 years. Time enough for most of us Euros to get used to it and don't question it that much any more.
      The bi

  • Remind me never to travel to China. I would never want to have my data in some massive governmental database!

    • USA has the same database of people visiting.
      Member countries of EU already have the same.
      All that is happening is that member countries will share the data now.
      Yeah, I want the police in france to be able to find out that the person they just grabbed is a criminal from my country.
    • Oh don't worry about that, their systems are a useless hodgepodge, they'll never find your data from there again, might as well send it straight to /dev/null

  • Spying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by byteherder ( 722785 ) on Monday April 22, 2019 @09:32AM (#58471230)
    Who thinks this won't just end up as one big database that will let anyone in the government spy on you.
    If you think this will somehow be contained to just law enforcement and border crossings, you are incredibly naive.

    • Who thinks this won't just end up as one big database that will let anyone in the government spy on you.

      Government will definitely "spy."

      I am surprised about the narrative. If this were to be in Venezuela, Russia, Iran or 'any of those countries", the narrative would be of what one would call a "hostile state."

    • EU tends to have pretty heavy-handed privacy laws, so I doubt that abominations like private facial-recognition contractors being given access will happen. EU is not the US or pUKe, thankfully.
      • The EU does have much tighter privacy laws. Better protection than you will find in the US or UK.

        The question is will governments be willing to limit themselves in the use of this new database to spy on its citizens?
        Will governments be willing to punish themselves for violating citizen's privacy?
        • The EU has the advantage of enraged populations willing and able to riot, strike, burn things, and generally shut entire countries down. Checks and balances, baby!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by egyas ( 1364223 )
      And not just the EU. My Spidey-senses tell me that since US law enforcement is (for now) forbidden from federally creating this kind of system, the feds will take bio-metric data they do collect from cases, along w/ any "assisting" local/state PDs, and upload that data to Interpol. Which will then become a "partner" in this new EU system. Which will then allow the US Fed to search the DB because they are "contributors". In the end, we have a national/internal bio-metric database, housed OUTSIDE of the U

    • Who thinks this won't just end up as one big database that will let anyone in the government spy on you.

      No one. The difference is in Europe people aren't afraid of governments, so they generally behave with the data they are given and use it mostly for beneficial things.

  • Given the fact that people are free to cross borders un-monitored within the EU then it is hardly surprising that countries have harmonized their databases. Don't you want the local hospital to be able to identify you? The local police to know who they just arrested for fighting at the soccer game. After all Facebook doesn't just know your identity anywhere on the planet, it knows how much money you have and what kink you wank to. So what "privacy" issue are you worried about exactly, the one where the State hemmed in by laws and open access legislation can find out who you are to provide services - or a shadowy private company who want to use big data to turn you into a profit center subject to no laws or monitoring? I suspect that most of this thread will be about the former. "They" really do have you under their thumb, only it is not actually "a government" who will be running the rest of your life is it. Is it?

    • Yes, Facebook "knows" that cookie #6,494,630,464,026 visited a forum about pistols, so they show me an ad for
      50% off holsters. This is obviously a great harm to me.

      Much less harmful is the government tracking me, and when they see I have an interest in pistols and happen to live near a certain school, I end up with a SWAT team busting down my door and shooting my wife.

      To me, an abusive government is slightly more concerning than an ad on a web page. You're free to disagree. (And maybe you better disagree,

    • "unmonitored". Yeah, right.

      • No passport checks at the border. Sure the CCTV records your vehicle registration in the first town you hit, same as everywhere in the world.

  • NCIS/CJIS (Score:2, Troll)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
    FBI and US passport authorities have been doing this for 50+ years. The problem isn't a centralized database of passports and criminals. The problem is abuse of the data, which is more likely in the US, with lax privacy laws, than in the EU, where privacy laws are getting stricter, and "privacy in public" is an accepted concept.

  • some people will be required to wear yellow stars of david, others will be required to wear a star and crescent.

    EU citizens from Germany will be required to wear a swastica.

    US Citizens visiting the EU will need to wear an orange haired troll doll until 2021.

  • Were worried about Facebook. Government just said hold my beer! Also this is great news for hackers since they just have one source to hit now for everyones information instead of hundreds.

    • I mean, given that FB builds psychological as well as biometric databases, and given that they sell (or rather lease) those to the governments (and other companies and anyone with money), FB is still scarier.

      Doesn't mean this isn't bad news, but it's small potatoes compared to FB.

  • Would all the EU apologists, remainers, Statists and anti-border fanatics like to say something?

    Anything?
    Anyone?

    The EU which they love, which they idolize,
    keeps restricting freedoms, keeps removing rights,
    increasing costs, increasing regulations,
    and never, ever causing the rich, powerful and corrupt any problems.

    But as a Liberal, should I say anything, anything against the EU, I am smeared as a right winger.

    Authoritarian Fascism, defended and supported by the Left, the Right and
    the new Aristocratic Elite.

    Pi

    • Other than that they got the idea from the USA who have been fingerprinting people at borders for ... shit I don't know but it certainly happened over 10 years ago already.

      You can see me out here right? It's because you live in a glass house. Now put down that rock or it'll look bad for you.

      But while I'm feeding trolls:

      The EU which they love, which they idolize,

      No one idolises or loves governments. They only idolise or love specific actions from said governments. People who use the terms idolise or love when talking about any government are typicall

    • But as a Liberal, should I say anything, anything against the EU, I am smeared as a right winger.

      There is plenty to criticize about the EU, but if all you do is lazily repeat right-wing propaganda then don't whine if people lazily lump you together with the right wing.

      • Yes, because if you don't want to be tracked, and monitored when you do anything... You must be criminal, or a right wing NAZI!!!! . Or both! *Gasp*

  • 1984 idiocracy! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    it honestly starts to be 1984 and idiocracy!

  • ....that they race ahead to link all this data together on the people in the EU, yet there's still essentially not even an effort to create a harmonized border patrol/coast guard yet?

    What might one infer from such priorities?

  • Nothing is being created.
    Databases that already exist and are already used by various law enforcement are being unified.
  • Brexiteers being against this is hilarious. They are always complaining about how they don't know who is entering their country from the rest of the EU.
    This would help enormously by giving every member country access to these databases.
  • Officials also said that this system was a long time in coming and will help to ensure that hackers only have to compromise one database now instead of dozens. "It's just silly that hackers have had to target so many different systems in the past" said one official. "Now, the process is streamlined for everyone." he added.
  • Coming soon... :)
  • Every time I read about the overreach of the European Union I can't help but think of the Owner Trilogy by Neal Asher. They were written in 2011 (and on) and the future it paints for mankind is bleak but essentially caused by the overreaction of the various government blocks to aggressive capitalism and bad behaviour of mega-corporations whilst global warming takes full effect and the population of the earth explodes. As sci-fi space opera it's quite good. As a warning to the political situation that can

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