Democrat Janurary-February 2013 (Number 133)
Getting to know you
Prum TreatyDNA and DVLA
The objective of the Prum Treaty is for each EU Member State to grant each other access rights to their automated DNA analysis files, automated fingerprint identification systems and vehicle registration data which includes owners of vehicles.
This little known treaty was originally signed by Schengen Member States back in 2005. The European Commission turned this into EU wide legislation in 2008 with agreement of the New Labour Government. This legislation is supposed to be in place by 2014 and Britain has been threatened with £millions fines by the European Justice Court for none implementation.
A Commission report admits “A considerable number of member states consider that the matching rules, in particular for DNA data, are not fully satisfactory and should be designed...so as to avoid matches that are ...false...”.
The thought of police forces across 26 other Member States having access to DVLA data is mind boggling where one wrong digit could result in the use of the European Arrest Warrant and a knock at the door and transportation to somewhere else in the EU.
This is EU legislation that must be stopped and Parliament needs to do just that.
EU-Passenger
Name Record (PNR)
On 9 January the Commission published a call for proposals for projects that at the very least see the "establishment of a unit in the Member State which will be responsible for the collection, processing and retention of PNR data," and preferably also the actual ability to collect, store, process and share the data.
This data would be collected at air and seaports.
This has been described by Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht last year as part of the "ever-creeping drive for more pervasive retention and analysis of private data and big brother-style surveillance."
The scheme will be financed by the EU and planned to commence in 2014.. It is another piece of EU legislation that parliament can stop.
(Source - Statewatch January 2013)