Government database

Government databases collect personal information for various reasons (mass surveillance, Schengen Information System in the European Union, social security, statistics, etc.).

Canada

The Homeless Individuals and Families Information System was created in 1995. The Government Electronic Directory Services (GEDS) provide a directory of Canadian federal public servants for all regions across Canada.

European Union

The legislative body of the European Union passed the Data Retention Directive on 2005-12-15. It requires telecommunication operators to implement mass surveillance of the general public through retention of metadata on telecommunications and to keep the collected data at the disposal of various governmental bodies for substantially long times. Access to this information is not required to be limited to investigation of serious crimes, nor is a warrant required for access.^{[citation needed]}

Belgium

During World War II, the Gestapo arrested activists of the Communist Party of Belgium (Julien Lahaut, Jean Terfve...) with the assistance of Belgian governmental databases.^{[citation needed]}

Today, 450 000 persons have had their fingerprints taken.

Denmark

The Det Centrale Personregister, established in 1968, contains information concerning the name, address, Danish personal identification number, date and place of birth, citizenship and other associated information. Virtually every government agency in Denmark receives information about a person from this database.

France

King Louis XIV had put in place a system of surveillance of craftsmen in the 17th century. Napoleon then put in place the "Workers' Booklet" (Livret ouvrier) without which a worker could not travel. Before World War I, the Third Republic had put in place the Carnet B on which all left-wing activists (trade-unionists, anarchists, socialists, etc.) were registered. Léon Jouhaux or Victor Pengam were on that list. They were to be arrested in the event of a war, as the government feared that the left-wing would oppose itself to the war. However, after Jean Jaurès's assassination a few days before the war and the rallying of most of the left-wing to the Union sacrée (Sacred Union) government, the Carnet B was not used to detain individuals.^{[citation needed]}

In the interwar period, police officer André Tulard set up a database registering communists and others activists. The "Tulard database" was then used under Vichy to register Jews. These files were handed out to Theodor Dannecker of the Gestapo, and greatly assisted the French police in carrying out raids against Jews, who were then interned at Drancy camp before being deported to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

Furthermore, during the war, René Carmille created what would become the INSEE code used as a Social Security number. The CNIL agency, in charge of respect of civil rights and informatic liberties, was created after the revelation, in 1974, of a government databases called SAFARI. Databases are supposed to have the CNIL's approbation before being authorized.

In 1995 the STIC (Système de traitement des infractions constatées) was unformally created. It registered both criminal offenders and plaintiffs. In January 1997 it registered 2,5 million offenders and 2,7 million victims.^[1] The STIC was legalized only in 2001.^[1] The Gendarmerie, which depends of the Interior Minister, has a similar database called JUDEX (2,2 millions persons in 2003.^[2] The STIC today registers 24,4 millions persons, and the maximum conservation length of information is of 40 years. It has lifted several controversies, as some people have not been able to find jobs because they were registered on the STIC (sometimes wrongly, others simply as victims). In 2005 the CNIL discovered a rate of 47% of errors included in the STIC database.^[2]

In 1998 the FNAEG, registering DNA information, was created by the Plural Left government of Lionel Jospin, with the authorization of the CNIL organism in charge of informatic freedom issues. First used to register sex offenders, it has since been extended to cover almost any crime, including those opposing themselves through civil disobedience to genetically modified food (GMO). The FNAEG today registers 400,000 genetic prints, and encounters rising opposition.^{[citation needed]}

In 2004 the Fichier judiciaire automatisé des auteurs d'infractions sexuelles, dependent of the Justice Minister, has been created to register sex offenders.^{[citation needed]}

The same year, the National Assembly voted the loi pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique to implement the Electronic Commerce EU directive. This law will force all Internet Service Providers (ISP), phone operators, webmasters, etc., to keep information on visitors (codewords, VISA cards numbers, pseudonyms, contributions on forums and blogs, etc.) for at least a year (and up to three years). The information would be accessible for the RG domestic intelligence agency, counter-intelligence agencies, the judicial police (PJ) and investigative magistrates.^{[citation needed]}

Since September 2005, twenty one Departments are experimenting the Base-élèves (Students-Base) system, which registers children aged 3 and more. It registers for the time being address, phone numbers, nationalities, etc.^{[citation needed]}

In 2006, the then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy created the ELOI database to register foreigners and illegal aliens. But the Conseil d'État deemed the arrêté (close to a decree) illegal.^{[citation needed]}

The CNIL controlled police computer records in 2006, and found more than a half of mistakes which it had to correct.^[3]

Sarkozy's government issued a decree on 7 August 2007 to generalize a voluntary biometric profiling program of travellers in airports. The program, called Parafes, was to use fingerprints. The new database would be interconnected with the Schengen Information System (SIS) as well as with a national database of wanted persons (FPR). The CNIL protested against this new decree, opposing itself to the recording of fingerprints and to the interconnection between the SIS and the FPR.^[4]

In autumn 2009, the French Parliament will examine and vote (very probably) a law called Loppsi^[5] which permit the creation of a informatic platform connecting all the Government databases. ^[6] · ^[7]

Germany

The Stasi in East Germany collected information on thousands of citizens. In West Germany, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz domestic intelligence agency has also collected data since the 1970s, first in the frame of anti-terrorist legislation and the struggle against the Baader Group. 80% of the individuals registered by the RFA belong to the left or the far-left, 10% to the far-right and 10% are registered as "undesirables".^[8]

Switzerland

The Secret files scandal in 1989 revealed that over 900,000 people had been registered by the Bundespolizei. With a population of approximately 7 million, that meant almost one citizen out of every seven had been put under surveillance^[9]

DNA databases were created in 2002 by the National Council.

United Kingdom

The British Police hold records of 5.5 million fingerprints and over 3.4 million DNA samples on the National DNA Database. There is increasing use of roadside fingerprinting - using new police powers to check identity. Concerns have been raised over the unregulated use of biometrics in schools, affecting children as young as three.

In London, the Oyster card payment system [1] can track the movement of individual people through the public transport system, although an anonymous option is available, while the London congestion charge uses computer imaging to track car number plates.

A bank of seven Closed-circuit television cameras monitoring people exiting Birmingham New Street Station, a major British railway station.

In 2002 the UK government announced plans to extend the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, so that at least 28 government departments would be given powers to browse citizens' web, email, telephone and fax records, without a warrant and without a subject's knowledge. Public and security authorities made a total of 440,000 requests to monitor people's phone and internet use in 2005-2006.

In 2004 the Information Commissioner, talking about the proposed British national identity database gave a warning of this, stating, "My anxiety is that we don't sleepwalk into a surveillance society." Other databases causing him concern are the National Child Database, the Office for National Statistics' Citizen Information Project, and the NHS National Programme for IT.

In 2004^[update] it was estimated [2] that the United Kingdom was monitored by over four million CCTV cameras, some with a facial recognition capacity, with practically all town centres under surveillance. Serious concerns have been raised that the facial biometric information which will be stored on a central database through the ID Card scheme could be linked to facial recognition systems and state-owned CCTV cameras to identify individuals anywhere in the UK, or even to compile a database of wanted citizens' movements without their knowledge or consent. Currently, in the City of Westminster, microphones are being fitted next to CCTV cameras. Westminster council claims that they are simply part of an initiative against urban noise, and will not "be used to snoop", but comments from a council spokesman appear to imply that they have been deliberately designed to capture an audio stream alongside the video stream, rather than simply reporting noise levels. [3]

Across the country efforts are underway to increasingly closely track all road vehicle movements, initially using a nationwide network of roadside cameras connected to automatic number plate recognition systems ("Project Laser"). In the longer term mandatory onboard vehicle telematics systems are also suggested, to facilitate road charging (see vehicle excise duty).^{[citation needed]}

In 2008 plans were being made to collect data on people's phone, e-mail and web-browsing habits and were expected to be included in the Communications Data Bill. The "giant database" would include telephone numbers dialed, the websites visited and addresses to which e-mails are sent "but not the content of e-mails or telephone conversations."^[10][11]

Russia

The SORM (and SORM-2) laws enable complete monitoring of any communication, electronic or traditional, by eight state agencies, without warrant.

United States

• In 2006 the existence of the NSA call database was revealed. It is estimated that the database contains over 1.9 trillion call-detail records.^[12]

• Fusion center was started as a joint project between the Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs between 2003 and 2007.

• The United States Air Force created, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, a controversial database, TALON included lists of anti-war groups and people who have attended anti-war rallies.^[13]

• In August 2007, the US Department of Defense announced that Guardian, another database organized by the FBI, would take over data collection and reporting which was previously handled by the Talon database system.^[14]

• Operating between 1967 and 1973, over 5,925 foreigners and 1,690 organizations and US citizens were included on the Project MINARET watch lists (among whom Malcolm X, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Martin Luther King, etc.), a sister project to Project SHAMROCK. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was voted by the Congress after the exposure of the latter.

• In the United States, the DNA Identification Act of 1994 formally authorized the FBI to operate CODIS. It was completed by the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000, which was amended by the USA PATRIOT Act, Title V.

• Homeless Management Information Systems developed in the late 1990s.

• CM/ECF (Case Management Electronic Case Filing)

• The FBI is currently the subject of a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) because of a lack of public notice describing their database and the criteria for including personal information, as required by the Privacy Act of 1974. The lawsuits are a result of two Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the EFF in 2006.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} STIC
2. ^ ^{a b} Les fichiers STIC et JUDEX détournés de leur destination initiale, Human Rights League (LDH), 3 November 2006 (French)
3. ^ Les fichiers policiers contrôlés par la CNIL, Le Monde, 13 July 2007 (French)
4. ^ Généralisation du fichage biométrique volontaire des voyageurs dans les aéroports français, Le Monde, 8 August 2007 (French)
5. ^ (French)Project of law Loppsi on the french department of interior.
6. ^ (French)"Un superlogiciel pour traquer la délinquance", on the newspaper Le Figaro, published 2009/06/22
7. ^ (French)"Le fichier Périclès, grand mix de données personnelles", in the newspaper Le Monde, published 2009/06/2009
8. ^ Le modèle RFA, L'Humanité, 3 March 2003 (French)
9. ^ The British Secret Service in Neutral Switzerland, Daniele Ganser, in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 20, nº 4, December 2005, pp. 553–80 (p. 557).
10. ^ "Concern over giant database idea". BBC. October 15, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7671046.stm. Retrieved 2008-10-15. "The government's terror watchdog has expressed concern about proposals for a giant database to store details of all phone calls, e-mails and internet use." 
11. ^ "Storm over Big Brother database". The Independent (London). October 15, 2008. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-storm-over-big-brother-database-961388.html. Retrieved 2008-10-15. "The controversial measure will be included as a way of combating terrorism in the Data Communications Bill, which is to be introduced in the Queen's Speech in December. Ministers are known to be considering the creation of a single database holding all the information, which would include phone numbers dialled and addresses to which emails are sent but not details of phone conversations or the contents of emails." 
12. ^ "Three Major Telecom Companies Help US Government Spy on Millions of Americans". Democracy Now!. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/12/1353225. Retrieved 2006-05-15. 
13. ^ Pentagon to Shutter Anti-Terrorism Database, npr.org
14. ^ Defense Department to Close TALON System Sgt. Sara Wood, USA, American Forces Press Service, 8/21/07.

See also

• Biometrics
• Mass surveillance
• Surveillance
• National DNA database