EU watch list

European Union plans to extend the Schengen Information System (SIS)to track suspected protestors..

..from http://www.quintessenz.at

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EU plans to extend the Schengen Information System (SIS) to:

i) create EU database to target “suspected” protestors and bar them from entering a country where a protest is planned

ii) create EU database of all “foreigners” to remove third country nationals who have not left within the “prescribed time frame” (full report as [1]pdf file)

The Council of the European Union (the 15 EU governments) are discussing plans to create two new dedicated databases on the Schengen Information System (SIS). The first database would cover public order and protests and lead to:

“Barring potentially dangerous persons from participating in certain events [where the person is] notoriously known by the police forces for having committed recognised facts of public order disturbance”

“Targeted” suspects would be tagged with an “alert” on the SIS and barred from entry the country where the protest or event was taking place.

The second database would be a register of all third country nationals in the EU who will be tagged with an “alert” if they overstay their visa or residence permit – this follows a call by the German government for the creation of a “centralised register”.

Both of these new databases are being put forward under the post 11 September “Anti-terrorism roadmap” (item 45 on the version of 15.11.01, to “Improve input of alerts into the SIS”).

In its report following the protests in Gothenburg and Genoa on 13 July the Justice and Home Affairs Council agreed to the creation of national databases of “trouble-makers” but put off the decision to create a centralised EU-wide database, see: [2]Statewatch report: EU plans the surveillance of protestors

This initiative comes in the context of the debate over the definition of terrorism to be agreed by the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 6-7 December. The [3]draft on the table would embrace protests and protestors in the definition of terrorism.

Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch, commented:

“After the protests in Gothenburg the EU governments adopted far-reaching plans to put protestors under surveillance. After 11 September the European Commission proposed a definition of terrorism which also extended to protests.

Now under the EU’s “Anti-terrorist roadmap” we have the frightening prospect that details of suspected protestors and dissenters will be held by the Schengen Information System on one centralised, computerised EU-wide database and all “foreigners” in the EU held on another – and both are to be the subject of “targeted” action and/or surveillance. Protestors and “foreigners” are to be targeted as representing primary “threats” to the internal security of the EU.”

The full Statewatch report with more details on “foreigners” registers and the European Commission’s Communication on illegal immigration: [4]Full report – the “enemy with” II (pdf file)

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The targeting of “known individuals” will be based on information gathered at national level (by police and security agencies) and passed on to the SIS in Strasbourg. The database of suspected “troublemakers” held on the SIS will then be accessed by police and internal security agencies when there is an assumed “threat” for a particular event in that country. This would deny people the right of free movement in the EU and the right to protest. However, the placing of an “alert” on the SIS that a “targeted” person is a suspected “troublemaker” could be accessed – during a specific event – and used to stop them travelling for other purposes such as visiting friends or to go on holiday – it would constitute a quasi criminal record. Moreover, the construction at national level of a register of “known individuals” means that quite ordinary and everyday political activity of groups and organisations will have to be placed under regular surveillance.

German government calls for EU-wide “foreigners” database

In the immediate aftermath to the 11 September attacks in the USA the German government put forward far-reaching proposals to the meeting of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council on 27-28 September. These included a proposal that at the national level “each Member State should maintain centralised population registers and centralised registers storing data on third-country nationals present in the territory of the Union” and that there should be established:

“a European central register of third-country nationals present within the territory of the Union”

Only two EU states have registers of “foreigners” (third-country nationals): Germany and Luxembourg (see: [6]The enemy within II for full analysis)

It might have been expected that such a far-reaching, and potentially dangerous, idea would have been noted and dismissed as extreme but is was not, it re-appeared on the measures to be taken post-11 September under the Council’s “Anti-terrorism roadmap”. SIS to hold database on “foreigners” in the EU

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Full-text:

http://www.statewatch.org/news/2001/nov/19sis.htm

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