Tony Bunyan*: the EU in cahoots with the US
I am going to talk about what is happening at the European Union level, how the EU is cooperating with the United States on issues like databases, passenger name records and biometrics. But first I want to put it in context. There is little doubt in my mind that EU governments have cynically used 11 September to introduce many measures which have absolutely nothing to do with tackling terrorism. Documents in the past used to distinguish between terrorism, organised crime, serious crime and crime, i.e. any crime; now documents just say we need all this surveillance to deal with terrorism and crime; in other words new mechanisms of surveillance to tackle almost everything in the world where anybody breaks any rules.
On 25 March 2004, Statewatch produced an analysis of fiftyseven new anti-terror measures about to be adopted in the EU. Twenty-seven of the fifty-seven had little or nothing to do with tackling terrorism. Furthermore, while there have been and are lots of differences between the EU and the United States over the war against the ‘Axis of Evil’, the war in Iraq, Syria or Iran, there is little or no difference between them when it comes to the ‘war on terrorism’. The language is different, the timing is different, but some measures are being introduced in the EU that George Bush would never dare propose in the US.
Since 11 September, an ‘EU-US axis’ has built up. Every six months there are forty-plus high-level meetings between the US and the EU on what is called ‘Justice Home Affairs’: policing, immigration, intelligence and customs. The US is even sitting in on Council working parties in the EU. When the minutes come, you get two versions: the officially released version, which is called ‘partially accessible’, with lots of blank, deleted paragraphs; and then we get hold of the real document by the back door and find that everything that has been blanked out is the position and demands of the US. So, we are not even allowed to know the influence they are having on policy-making at the highest level.
It was quite easy to fall into the trap after 11 September to think that it was the real reason for all this new surveillance and all this new social control. In my view, it was a ‘trigger’ for the acceleration of a process that was already happening. Put in very simple terms, if we take our cue from those extraordinary analyses by Sivanandan in the 1980s and 1990s, we see that globalisation and globalism are the economic counterparts of the development of the state and state powers. And the ‘war on terrorism’, as a political ideology, has filled the ‘gap’ left by the end of the Cold War in 1989. So the political project and the economic project go hand in hand. Exceptional measures were brought in after 11 September, but ‘exceptional’ means temporary, time limited – now five years on they are the norm. The powers of the state, in the UK and EU-wide, to construct new databases, collecting everyone’s fingerprints, have no end to them. They will be built on, inter-linked (be ‘inter-operable’ in the jargon) and data exchanged with few, if any, limits or accountability.
They are creating a system of surveillance to monitor everybody – black, white, Asian, Muslim. But, of course, within that they can then target the Muslims going to Pakistan one day, football supporters the next and protestors going to Genoa. I’ll briefly explain some of the systems in place. The first big system they are setting up is the ‘Visa Information System’ (VIS). Under this, everybody who wants to visit the EU has to get a visa back in the country they come from and have ten fingerprints taken, which are put on a database in the EU. Except, even that’s not quite right, because you only have your fingerprints taken if you come from the 126 countries on the ‘black list’ (not the twenty-six on the ‘white list’ who do not need visas, including America, Canada, Australia and Japan). And when these people come in, how do you check them? How do you know that this person is the real person? So they have got to be fingerprinted again. And as an individual moves around the EU between different countries, they will have to be fingerprinted every time and checked against the data.
The EU is now discussing at what age the children of people getting visas should be fingerprinted. They are discussing it as a technological, not a moral or political question, saying: ‘Well, it must be twelve, and if any member state wants to do it for less than twelve, i.e. down to zero, they can do it.’ (The current proposed standard is to fingerprint anyone over the age of six.) In secret papers, it’s been revealed that Spain and Lithuania are fingerprinting children at birth – at birth! And this proposal is being dealt with by a technical committee of the EU, not even being debated in the European Parliament.
When the decision was taken at the EU that everybody had to give their fingerprints to get a passport, it was barely reported in the press. It wasn’t debated around Europe. I don’t think most people in Europe know, including most people in this room, that when you apply for a
passport after next autumn, you are going to have to physically present yourself at an enrolment centre, be interrogated for fifteen to twenty minutes to prove who you are, compulsorily have your fingerprints taken and a facial scan taken. That’s two biometrics being taken from you for your record. For two years it will be voluntary, but by 2010, when you are given a passport, you will automatically, compulsorily be given an ID card at the same time.
The last point I want to make is about profiling. It is obvious at the moment that every country has got its own watchlist. There is not an EU-wide watchlist; there’s a terrorist list, which is quite small. But the watchlists run into their hundreds and, in the UK – thousands. In July and August 2005, we got one example in Greece of how they work. It only came out because they abducted twenty-nine Pakistani men, held them for a week and threatened them. MI5 officers were present as part of those interviews in Athens. The men were released without charge. When the minister was asked about it, he said these twenty-five weren’t on the list of 5,432 people given to the Greek authorities by MI6. What? Greece was given a list of Pakistani immigrants. The Pakistani population of Greece is 25,000; 1,100 of whom were brought in for questioning; they found six people with immigration irregularities and not a single terrorist suspect. If Britain handed over 5,000-plus names to Greece, how many did it give to Germany, to France?
A couple of years ago, ten Muslim men were arrested in Manchester, held for seven days and released without charge. A measure has been instituted throughout the EU that information obtained during such investigations must be circulated around the EU. So information on the ten men, ten men’s families, ten men’s friends, ten men’s work friends – a circle that could include up to 300 people – can be seen by the whole EU. Yet there is nothing in the measure which says that if those men were released, as they were, or acquitted, as they might have been, all these names have to be removed from the databases of all the different agencies around Europe. This is how databases and watchlists can build up.
To conclude. For us here today, it is not just a question of bringing single issues together, connecting them to make a campaign. It is also about connecting and internationalising issues and making European struggles part of our national struggle. For the seeds of fundamental change are being planted in Europe and, if we ignore this, it will be too late to stop them flourishing here.
*Tony Bunyan is director of Statewatch, an organisation that monitors the state and civil liberties in Europe.