All in the name of security

Ian Traynor in the Guardian, in an article in which I can at last agree with some of the contents, suggests that we should be worried about European Union plans.

Brussels wants an international bank of biometric data, in other words for our own to be incorporated into theirs! It wants a Union-wide police force, at least in some respects. It wants to harmonise criminal law.

All this at a time when some of us, with even empty gestures from the Government, want to bring decision-making closer to the the people. We want to devolve decisions beyond even the nations of the UK to local resolution. The European Union wants to wrest control to unaccountable and undemocratic control somewhere among faceless people in Europe.

Why do they want to achieve this? To some extent, of course, it panders to those who are trying to create Europe, - a country which can stand up to the big boys in the world, now their own little country on its own has lost influence.

Such people will go along with it all as achieving their dreams. The real reason seems to be one of greater security. Almost anything may be agreed if a threat to security, real or imaginary, is raised.

"It's freedom or security", we are told. That's why Brown stopped dithering for once and rushed through 42 days of detention without trial or charge. In the name of security we have endured many things.

Well, here's one person who does not feel greatly reassured by the fact that nearly thirty other governments with many thousands of officials, some of who have been complicit in defrauding the Union of vasts sums of money almost yearly, will have so-called confidential data on me, and have the ability tap my telephone or read my e-mails, or to lose files or CDs with data. Nor do I wish to be subject to a foreign controlled and unaccountable police force, with remote decisions made about me and my community, and I certainly do not wish to be subject to a criminal law system radically different to my own. Nothing in the proposals makes me feel more secure.

We already have the threat, openly declared by our own Government, to make all government held databases and some private ones subject to common access. If this were spread to similar databases across Europe the potential to spy on or manipulate citizens would be immense, and the potential for corrupt use of the data even greater.

We read yesterday and today of the ease with which a computer expert can clone a biometric passport or ID card. How valuable would such cards be, even if issued by the majesty of the EU?

The only good thing I can find in the proposals is that the 42 day detention provision would fall. On second thoughts if the EU could be persuaded that EU security was at stake....