Government database to track us abroad
Posted on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 by Home Office WatchCategory: Surveillance
The Government intends to store all Britons’ international travel details on a new database.
Every passenger in and out of the UK will have their details held on computer for up to 10 years, including their name, address, telephone number, credit card details, seat reservation and travel itinerary.
The UK Border Agency already counts people who enter or leave the country by “high risk” routes, including via Heathrow and Gatwick airports. Under the “e-borders” programme it is planned that all 250m annual movements will be counted by 2014.
From The Times:
Some immigration officials with knowledge of the plans admit there is likely to be public concern.
“A lot of this stuff will have a legitimate use in the fight against crime and terrorism, but it’s what else it could be used for that presents a problem,” said one. “It will be able to detect whether parents are taking their children abroad during school holidays. It could be useful to the tax authorities because it will tell them how long non-UK domiciled people are spending in the UK.”
The database is also expected to monitor people’s travel companions.
A spokesman for the NO2ID campaign group said, “When your travel plans, who you are travelling with, where you are going to and when are being recorded you have to ask yourself just how free is this country?” [Source: Press Association]
The location of the database? It’s a secret: for a government so keen to know our exact whereabouts, they are very coy about revealing theirs.
Although believed to be in Wythenshawe, Manchester, staff have been told to refer to it only as “a new operations centre in the northwest.”
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February 8th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Why don’t they just give up all this piecemeal nonsense and make us report to the police station each day with our papers?
It’s interesting how all the measures designed to ‘protect us against terrorism’ and nothing else are gradually being edged to stop crime and immigration offenders; I assume that they would have included money laundering but their rich friends might object. It’s the scope all these changes give for petty officiousness by state paid officials - police and, probably worse, functionaries like contract security guards where the work is contracted out to the private sector - has the Home Office forgotten we know how the BNP has penetrated the immigration service?
February 8th, 2009 at 9:47 am
PS I guess I’d better not go too far from home as the knock on the door can’t be very long in arriving.
February 8th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
There are so many concerns about this latest database idea that it is difficult to know where to begin.
Firstly the issue of security, the government regularly loses important pieces of data. The loss of this much data will enable anyone to pass themselves off as someone else, and fool the identity checks perfectly.
Secondly it will enable any government employee to restrict your movements by simply pressing a few keys on their computer.
Your holiday will become subject to the whim of some civil servant.
Thirdly the problem of people being mis-identified. The home office has had to admit that one in seven of the records on the DNA database is either mis-labeled or is a duplicate.
There is also the fact that if you have vast amounts of information you can create associations between subjects that do not exist in real life.
If you take any one of these concerns that should be enough to warrant scrapping the system. If you add to this the fact that it only applies to UK citizens, when the government insists that it is worried about FOREIGN terrorists, then you must be against this idea.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
ID Cards are a serious threat to our freedom. However, combine that with the non democratic dictatorship that is the EU and we have REAL cause for concern.
the Eu has shown its true nature by using a law which means it is criminal to critisise the EU. CRITISISE!
The labour Part and consecutive governements have tricked us, and gradually undermined our costitution, untill finally surrendering our country to a foreign power.
Do not let the media manipulation, and the lack of information fool you!
March 15th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I am a UK expat and have lived in Germany since 1961. Here there is no problem with identity cards and they are very useful to have. More important is the mandatory principle of registering your address with the local authority. I have learned that the benefits of this far outweigh the unjustified fears about loss of civil rights. Here it takes five minutes to open a bank account by producing your identity card. In the UK you need to produce a utility services bill - laughable.
Get registered and obtain an identity card and a lot of these expensive government special operation will become unnecessary
Michael Gourd
March 28th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
A recent television program made an analogy concerning the Government’s undermining of our freedom. 2 things namely:
.Restrict movement (didnt Stalin try this?)
.Proposed ID cards - when cd’s containing personal information go walkabout how can our identities be secure - shelve this mad idea now!
And a third item, the DNA database. As an earlier comment said, 1 in every 7 person’s details are either mislabelled or duplicated, so how on earth can it be relied upon?! Especially when your fingerprints and dna are taken and stored regardless of whether you are guilty of anything.