Stockholm

The vast surveillance powers of the EU which are to increase exponentially under the Lisbon Treaty are beginning to hit the mainstream media. See here.

The Stockholm Programme, the EU's 5 year plan in the area of Justice and Home Affairs has received little discussion; could this be the result of the eponymous syndrome? The left wing European Civil Liberties Network (ECLN) and even Gareth Peirce, strongly criticise the Stockholm Programme stating: the policies outlined in Stockholm 'constitute an attack on civil liberties and human rights,' and warn against 'dangerous authoritarian tendencies within the EU.'

If you thought you had defeated clause 52 and the mass sharing of your data in the UK then you may be surprised to know that under the Stockholm programme, the mass collection and sharing of personal data including DNA records into an EU-wide database is to be enacted.

An example is the VIS database which will store the personal and biometric data of approximately 20 million Schengen visa applicants annually. With a five-year retention period, this will mean around 70 million sets of fingerprints being stored on the system at any one time, the largest biometric system in the world so far.

Open Europe has an exhaustive report here.