Brussels: Not Intrusive Enough

Those evil people in Brussels, who have so often and so deservedly been spattered with tabloid rhetoric because of their insane urges to ban potato crisps or regulate the bends in the British banana, are considering "controversial anti-terror plans that would collect up to 19 pieces of information on every air passenger entering or leaving the EU". Since they already supply the same information to the Americans for all passengers flying between Europe and the United States, presumably it seems a shame to waste it on the Bush administration. Civil libertarians and data protection officials have said the scheme is draconian and probably ineffective; but a majority of EU governments, who know better as usual, have indicated support.

As is traditional, the government here on the mainland has taken care to isolate itself at the heart of Europe; but not, as is also traditional, by simply sulking until an opt-out is granted. This is not the social chapter, after all; this is to do with snooping, spying, and above all being draconian and probably ineffective. All of these are, of course, New Labour specialties. Accordingly, the British government is the only one of the twenty-seven EU member states which "wants the system extended to sea and rail travel, to be applied to domestic flights and those between EU countries" and "to be able to exchange the information with third parties outside the EU", since even snooping and spying and being inefficient isn't much good unless it can be done by private companies and, no doubt, the US department of homeland security and perhaps the corresponding departments of our friends in China and Saudi Arabia too.

The British government has been monitoring flights from Pakistan and the Middle East under an arm-waving exercise called Operation Semaphore, and claims it has "resulted in hundreds of arrests" of rapists, drug smugglers and child traffickers. As usual when on solid ground, the Ministry of Data Confidentiality Within the Bounds of Economic Feasibility was apparently too modest to say how many of these arrests resulted in a conviction.