EU ‘seeking to turn migrant database into mass surveillance tool’
The EU has been accused of planning “a powerful tool for the mass surveillance” of migrants through proposed changes to a fingerprint database for asylum seekers.
Campaigners from 31 non-governmental organisations, including Amnesty International and the European Network Against Racism, made the charge in an open letter to the European parliament urging MEPs to rethink plans to overhaul the Eurodac database of asylum seekers’ fingerprints.
In 2018 lawmakers from the European parliament and EU interior ministers struck a political deal to expand the database, meaning it would include facial images, passport or ID card details, as well as fingerprints. Authorities would also be able to start fingerprinting and photographing migrant children as young as six, compared with the current minimum age limit of 14.
Source: EU ‘seeking to turn migrant database into mass surveillance tool’ | European Union | The Guardian
