EU introduces social credit for travelers. You are next in line!
From May next year, the EU will start demanding holidaymakers
biometric data at its borders in the latest ramp-up of mass digital
surveillance. The move will not only greatly increasing the level
of surveillance in the bloc but also the length of delays at
transport terminals. The Telegraph reports (
https://bit.ly/3g9db2l):
Brits hopping across the Channel will first have their fingerprints
and photos taken (
https://bit.ly/3D5uwSU). The new mass
data-gathering scheme, which will go live in May, is part of the
evolution of a so-called 'Smart Border'.
But there is nothing 'smart' about the plans. The data grab has been
justified by the aim of improving detection of dangerous travellers,
finding vulnerable people, and reducing fraud, but it comes at an
eye-watering cost to liberty and logistics. The border plans have
been rightly described by civil society groups as "disproportionate
and unnecessary", while the Port of Dover's boss has warned of
"significant and continued disruption for a very long time".
All travellers aged over 12 will need to be biometrically logged,
creating an EU datastore loaded with hundreds of millions of people's
unique personal data. The EU is demanding not only a U.S.-style set
of four fingerprints, but facial images too. Holiday-makers' personal
information will be mixed in with eventually billions of pieces
of data, spanning photographs, palm prints, DNA records and facial
biometrics, to which controversial recognition algorithms can be
applied. This may be the biggest biometric data collection operation
in European history. What could possibly go wrong?
Too many of our European friends have an indifferent attitude to the
emergence of a data-hungry superstate - over 1.7 billion EU Digital
Covid Certificates were issued during the pandemic - but even those
falling out of love with liberte must be concerned about the
disastrous impact on tourism and transport. The Big Brother-style
EU border checks are estimated to take seven times longer than
checks today and the tailback at Dover could grow by
19 miles - roughly the distance of the Channel crossing itself.
It is ironic but not entirely surprising that the Schengen Area,
supposedly defined by freedom of movement, is becoming a digital
fortress. Authorities are adopting extreme technologies on the
seemingly neutral premise of progress, but this is not simply
a process of modernisation - it is a process of political
metamorphosis.
