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The UK authorities made illegal copies of the Schengen Information System

529 points by zoobab 7y ago

lugg 7y ago
Meh? If anyone thinks they didn't already have it ..
- xbdobd 7y ago
  Agreed, on your second point. But these stories are not “meh” because it reminds us how important it is that the UK leave the EU once and for all
2a0c40 7y ago
Sometimes I can‘t help thinking whether the UK is just the US‘ trojan horse in the EU. Well, things might change quite a bit after October 31st, so hurry up!
- noir_lord 7y ago
  Not much to think about we completely and totally are. One of the things that came out of Snowden releases was just how bloody efficient and interconnectef GCHQ is with the NSA. It's rather typical that the most efficient government body appears to be the one used for spying on its own (and everyone else's) citizens. It's ok though as the new home secretary is a stable and sensible...no wait it's Priti "I had to resign because I had secret undeclared meetings with a foreign power" Patel[1]. We are totally fucked. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-41920238 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-41920238
  - arethuza 7y ago
    I had a phone call with the Inland Revenue where they collected most of my details by an automated voice based system - which worked flawlessly. This came as a slight surprise as literally no other voice activated system works for me in any way that is remotely usable (Apple, Android, whatever is in my car...). I wonder where they get their voice recognition technology from? ;-)
    - viraptor 7y ago
      Highly targeted voice recognition is much simpler to train, which makes endpoints like inland revenue much more accurate than generic voice assistants. In many cases this is a problem of "did you say one of these 20 things" vs "let's try to transcribe every one of these words from a full dictionary".
      - arethuza 7y ago
        Yeah that makes sense, still it was a lot better than other systems I've used when I've phoned support lines for some commercial companies.
    - szerr0221 7y ago
      FYI some companies use people to transcribe the speech in real time, its faster than taking a phone call with all the extra pleasantries.
    - noir_lord 7y ago
      If I was a cynic I'd say they seem to be remarkably efficient at doing the things we don't want and much less so the things we do.
- malka 7y ago
  as a french, I cant wait for them to be out. They spent the last 50 years trying to sabotage the EU. They want to leave ? Good riddance.
  - martin_a 7y ago
    I'm totally with you. I wonder if UK should have left the EU even earlier and saved themselves and us a lot of hassle. I hope that the EU-friendly states might join again, but I think they would need to break up the UK for that, don't they?
    - arethuza 7y ago
      It could all get very messy - I think it is is highly likely that Scotland will want a second independence referendum as a major argument for staying in the union the last time was that it meant Scotland would stay in the EU. However, I also think the current government is also unlikely to allow a second referendum, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Scottish Government decided to have one anyway. Edit: To be clear: I mean messy legally/politically - not anything worse.
      - toyg 7y ago
        Yeah, it’s going to be Catalunya all over again. Except Scotland is not a little province, and if the SNP is forced underground, stuff will start to blow up for real.
        barry-cotter 7y ago
        Support for Scottish independence is greater in England than it is in Scotland. The U.K. isn’t Spain, the English are no more likely to keep the Scots in by force than the Canadians were going to keep Quebec in by force.
        smcl 7y ago
        That's nonsense. Some English might claim indifference or scoff at the idea of an independent Scotland. In reality however the UK is more a part of their identity than it is ours - Scotland splitting away literally kills off the concept of the "UK". Force wouldn't even be needed however - Westminster can just brush off pleas for an independence referendum (they'll point towards the one we had a couple of years ago pre-Brexit ), there's no revolutionary movement and I really don't foresee one developing any time soon.
- gingabriska 7y ago
  UK along with its overseas territories are biggest investor in US stock.
  - benj111 7y ago
    Isn't the US the biggest investor in US stock? Even if it's the largest foreign investor, that's not so surprising. It's the 5 largest economy in terms of GDP, the only ones bigger are the US, China (limited in how they move capital), Japan (luckily for their national debt, they prefer to buy domestic govt bonds), Germany (the only likely alternative for investing more). Also London is a major finance capital, so it could just be British banks buying US stocks with money from Russian oligarchs or whatever.
- sma222k0n 7y ago
  It's not the only trojan horse in EU https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/world/europe/germany-is-accused-of-helping-nsa-spy-on-european-allies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/world/europe/germany-is-a...
- mtgx 7y ago
  Of course it is. You could note it from all the US-friendly legislation they've been pushing within the EU. It's one of the reasons I was glad Brexit happened. The UK was usually the most important nation members pushing for surveillance laws in the EU and then have the EU share that data with the US.
- gadders 7y ago
  You say it like it's a bad thing. The UK has a lot more in common politically and philosophically with the US than the EU. TBH they should rename NAFTA to the North Atlantic Free Trade Area and we'd all be better off.
  - dangerface 7y ago
    >The UK has a lot more in common politically and philosophically with the US than the EU. Not even close, let's take a basic fundamental US principle like the right to free speech, it doesn't exist in the UK. The UK has had relation ships with most of the European countries for longer than the US has existed. The UK has more import and exports with the EU that the US and because of geographic constraints this will not change Brexit or not.
    - gadders 7y ago
      >>Not even close, let's take a basic fundamental US principle like the right to free speech, it doesn't exist in the UK. Sadly, this is correct, but I believe the UK has less constrained speech than continental Europe. I'd love to see a right to free speech brought into force in the UK >>The UK has had relation ships with most of the European countries for longer than the US has existed. This is also true, but neglects the fact that US was founded by Britain and was a British colony for 170 years. US law is based on English common law.
    - gnode 7y ago
      > US principle like the right to free speech, it doesn't exist in the UK. The UK has a right to freedom of expression in both common law and the Human Rights Act (incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights). There are many exceptions, but that's also the case for the First Amendment of the United States' constitution. Both the UK and US have defamation laws, criminalise real threats, Official Secrets Act / Espionage Act, gag orders, etc. One could argue there is a better right to free speech in the US, and that it has stronger legal protections, but it's by no means absolute or beyond comparison with that of the UK.
      - 7y ago
- rado 7y ago
  As they ask in Polanski's "The Ghost": Has the UK ever acted against US interests?
- zahrc 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on this?
- newsgremlin 7y ago
  I recently discovered a documentary: "The Spider’s Web – Britain’s Second Empire". Highlights that as much as 25% of the worlds wealth is held in offshore and onshore British jurisdictions. The Russians have nothing to do with Trump or Brexit, in my view the connections have been fabricated to seem real only to turn out to be dead ends that don't lead directly to the Kremlin in any meaningful way, both of these events have stifled democracy and social progress. The negative effects will only hurt the population and not the corrupt and nontransparent institutions. The US and UK look like the least likely countries in the world to start a revolution. The powers at be know this, and we the people know this to an extent.
- fpalmans 7y ago
  Can't the UK still unilaterally decide to stay?
draugadrotten 7y ago
This begs the question if UK/EU got a copy of all the US citizens ' fingerprints in return. It is possible to commit treason against your own country. Can someone commit treason against the EU? Is it a criminal offense?
- digitalengineer 7y ago
  Yes, when you’re a whistle blower (no joke). http://www.againstchildtrafficking.org/2018/06/roelie-post-the-life-of-a-whistle-blower-2/ http://www.againstchildtrafficking.org/2018/06/roelie-post-t...
- billsmithaustin 7y ago
  There isn’t a database of every US citizen’s fingerprints.
  - patrickmcnamara 7y ago
    Nor is there in the EU. The only government that has my fingerprint is the US, despite being an Irishman.
    - vinay427 7y ago
      Right, but it's worth mentioning that unlike the US and perhaps Ireland, countries in the Schengen area are required to issue passports containing fingerprint data, though most (all?) do not have a centralized database of citizens' fingerprints. The Netherlands planned to create a centralized store but it seems to face public opposition.
      - swebs 7y ago
        I'm pretty sure modern USA passports require fingerprint data. They at least have the pokeball symbol signaling that it contains biometrics.
        7y ago
daviddumenil 7y ago
This is a misleading title. The UK government gave access to US companies. There's currently no suggestion that the data moved to the US. More details here: https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 https://euobserver.com/justice/145530
- xpuente 7y ago
  Surprise. The bits can be in two or more places at the same time. You known... the magic of "cp"
- sudoaza 7y ago
  By US law companies are obligated to reveal any data they are ordered to and many times do that illegally also.
- empath75 7y ago
  The US companies were working for the UK government as well, i think.
- dangerface 7y ago
  You are posting a false narrative according to your own link. > UK made illegal copies of classified personal information from a database reserved for members of the passport-free Schengen travel zone. Why?
  - tzs 7y ago
    His link says that the UK made copies, and that private contractors hired by the UK government such as IBM were given access. IBM, and most other firms that the UK government likely uses as contractors, have offices and data centers in the UK. I didn't notice anywhere in his link that said that anyone moved copies of the data to the US.
miahi 7y ago
The title is incorrect. The Schengen Information System does not keep data for "all EU citizens", it only keeps such data for wanted persons, missing/stolen identity documents or objects (like cars, boats and so on). There is no centralized database for EU citizens photos or fingerprints (not even at national level in many countries).
- pknight 7y ago
  >There is no centralized database for EU citizens photos or fingerprints (not even at national level in many countries). "The database will aggregate the details of more than 350 million people, including their identifying information, such as names, passport number, dates of birth, as well as biometrics like fingerprints and facial scans." https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3074472/eu-parliament-votes-to-create-biometrics-database-of-350-million-people https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3074472/eu-parliament-v...
  - yaris 7y ago
    The link suggests that this was announced in April this year. Do you think all the necessary DBs have already been connected? I would expect it to happen next year earliest.
    - pknight 7y ago
      I suspect it's nowhere near live yet, but it's relevant to this topic. There will be a massive new database and it's a terribly unlikely that this data will not be leaked or shared at some point.
    - powi88nxjdi 7y ago
      So what if it was announced in April? Do we really believe we ca trust these groups with this data? This is like the Vogons justifying blowing up a planet because the paperwork was filed years ago. It’s not about the details. It’s about trust in institutions and I’m pretty sure we can see we should have none with these official bodies and the corporate buddies they give our work away to
BlackLotus89 7y ago
It would be actually nice if someone had the foodnotes. I will be happy when the UK is brexed out, but someone has to take responsibility for this.
an_ko 7y ago
Anyone have a less sensationalist primary source link? I'd like to see backed up facts, not outrage bait.
- ddebernardy 7y ago
  The tweet is the primary source. See who signed the letter. The story referenced in the first point is: https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 The second point raises a non-answer by the EC that led to the EP letter and the tweet.
hestefisk 7y ago
As a Danish citizen I’m deeply concerned about this and am strongly considering an FoIA request and lawsuit for lack of disclosure... if this is really true.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cat199 7y ago
  > FoIA honest question: Does this exist in EU or UK?
  - bpye 7y ago
    This very much exists in the UK [1] - I cannot speak for the EU as a whole. [1] - https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    In Dutch it's WOB and from German and Dutch colleagues I heard it's a thing there as well. I don't know of an EU country that doesn't have it. I thought it was an EU regulation, just like GDPR is mandatory to implement, but I can't find anything about it and our law is from 1991, so I guess it might not be after all.
  - hestefisk 7y ago
    Yes. In Denmark we call it ‘aktindsigt’.
- miahi 7y ago
  As the data in the SIS is classified, it's not covered by FoIA or GDPR requests.
sgt101 7y ago
The give away is (twitter.com) - nothing from that source is even close to true.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Only recently it was the the best source of the whole VLC issue. Sure twitter has it's issues, anything of scale with that level of user-base will and you get truths, lies and twisted statistics. Why the better media outlets have standard about two independent sources (BBC one example), however I'm mindful that you can get second sources that are just an echo-chamber of the first and it steam-rolls from there - VLC a good example again upon that.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zoobab 7y ago
  Maybe check who is the author of the Twitter post...
submeta 7y ago
I reckon the five eyes were sharing these kinds of infos for years. After the Snowden revelations I tend to think that there ain‘t no info about us citizens that the three letter organizations don‘t have or cannot have. Phone call logs, personal infos, medical records, everything we can think of. If they are interested in something, they‘ll get it. Sucks big time. But it seems ain‘t nothing we can do about it.
- submeta 7y ago
  The thing is: The moment you feel you could be observed or that you have no room for private thought or discussion, you start to censor yourself. Political discourse starts to get weakened. My gut feeling is this: Many people don't dare to express their true opinions even in supposedly private channels, fearing that these thoughts / ideas might come back at them years later. And I don't even mean radical thoughts. In a world where we non-americans are asked for our cellphone passwords, laptops, social media handles and passwords, how can we dare to criticize world affairs? Or imagine you are a young ambitious person who wants to change something by participating in the political process. You spend years getting somewhere, and then comes an info out of nowhere about your past and stops your carreer abruptly (like you cheated on your university diploma or something like that).
  - carapace 7y ago
    > Many people don't dare to express their true opinions If there's one thing the Internet has taught us is it not that most people's "true opinions" are merde? I don't like it either, but I think we have hope of stabilizing on a kind of "greatest common denominator" of behaviour, but only if the systems that do the surveillance are self-referential: they must apply to the powerful as much as the little guy.
Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
Putin is laughing hard...
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't do this here.
dangerface 7y ago
> UK made illegal copies of classified personal information from a database reserved for members of the passport-free Schengen travel zone. The UK is not in the Schengen travel zone and had no right to be accessing the data or sharing it with other foreign powers. The problem is that too much power is collected in one place that encourages bad actors to weaken security so that they can later do a grab and dash with "Plausible deniability". When people raise this warning it is dismissed as fear mongering, when the fears turn out to be justified people side step the issue and argue that the title should be millions instead of all. Some people have argued that the EU do not have a database of EU citizens fingerprints, but they have been building that database since 2004 [2]. These massive databases of personal information represent too much of a risk and should not exist. The only way to protect power from corruption is to distribute the power rather than consolidate it. [1] https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 [2] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-fingerprints/fingerprints-in-european-passports-legal-eu-court-idUKBRE99G0FX20131017 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-fingerprints/fingerprin...
- cromulent 7y ago
  The UK has a special arrangement to see the stolen vehicles, arrest warrants, etc. It can't see the Schengen entry / non entry alerts. https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/schengen-information-system_en https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/border...
  - miahi 7y ago
    Not all person alerts are entry/no entry alerts, so they don't access (or don't react to) a small subset of the person data.
- miahi 7y ago
  Other countries that are not in the Schengen area do have access to the SIS. Their access rights were given by them signing various agreements (the status is quite complex, you should check the SA status[1] for more details). Yes, the title should be millions. Of mostly missing or wanted persons or lost passport and national IDs. Not sure how you would propose to ensure the security of a zone without a massive database of people that are not desired in that zone or documents that should not be used because they are reported as lost by their owners. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
sailfast 7y ago
Reading the actual memo in the Tweet, it says that US Companies contracted by the UK were provided access to the data. So, as a made up example, [Massive US-based multinational consulting firm - IBM was listed in the euobserver article)] was contracted to do work for the UK government in this specific area and was provided access to the data (probably after being cleared to do so via a lengthy process that is typical for contracting with governments). Do we have any indication that this data was "copied to the US" in this memo, instead of being worked with in accordance with data security policies to keep it in the EU / UK? That said - if the UK is making illegal copies that's bad, but I wouldn't overreact to the submission title which is not correct.
jotm 7y ago
While this is bad and they should increase the security of this data, for now, I don't see how it would affect EU citizens. Any ideas? If you applied for a visa to the US, they already have your photo and fingerprints (hell, they had mine before my own country, before biometric passports). If not, what can they possibly do with that information?
dandare 7y ago
Is this news? > Schandal already made public in 2018: (link: https://euobserver.com/justice/141919 https://euobserver.com/justice/141919) euobserver.com/justice/141919 https://twitter.com/Ellen_Timmer/status/1154720007089266688 https://twitter.com/Ellen_Timmer/status/1154720007089266688
davengh 7y ago
Reading the comments in this thread and others, it seems to me that a lot of people want to argue about how many canaries have to die before the threat to the miners is taken seriously. That any of the Schengen information made it to the US at all is a dead canary.
scarejunba 7y ago
I wonder how much the ICO is going to fine them.
jeffk_teh_haxor 7y ago
The threat to privacy and security is more fundamental than anything that can be remedied by a GDPR nastygram.
guest 7y ago
wait a minute, you mean to tell me that governments spy on each other? holy shit, stop the fucking presses! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srK5-95VcaQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srK5-95VcaQ
ChuckMcM 7y ago
Wouldn't be the first time someone about to leave the company exfiltrated a bunch of proprietary information they wouldn't have access to after they left. :-)

529 points by zoobab 7y ago

lugg 7y ago

Meh? If anyone thinks they didn't already have it ..

xbdobd 7y ago
Agreed, on your second point. But these stories are not “meh” because it reminds us how important it is that the UK leave the EU once and for all

2a0c40 7y ago

Sometimes I can‘t help thinking whether the UK is just the US‘ trojan horse in the EU. Well, things might change quite a bit after October 31st, so hurry up!

noir_lord 7y ago
Not much to think about we completely and totally are. One of the things that came out of Snowden releases was just how bloody efficient and interconnectef GCHQ is with the NSA. It's rather typical that the most efficient government body appears to be the one used for spying on its own (and everyone else's) citizens. It's ok though as the new home secretary is a stable and sensible...no wait it's Priti "I had to resign because I had secret undeclared meetings with a foreign power" Patel[1]. We are totally fucked. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-41920238 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-41920238
- arethuza 7y ago
  I had a phone call with the Inland Revenue where they collected most of my details by an automated voice based system - which worked flawlessly. This came as a slight surprise as literally no other voice activated system works for me in any way that is remotely usable (Apple, Android, whatever is in my car...). I wonder where they get their voice recognition technology from? ;-)
  - viraptor 7y ago
    Highly targeted voice recognition is much simpler to train, which makes endpoints like inland revenue much more accurate than generic voice assistants. In many cases this is a problem of "did you say one of these 20 things" vs "let's try to transcribe every one of these words from a full dictionary".
    - arethuza 7y ago
      Yeah that makes sense, still it was a lot better than other systems I've used when I've phoned support lines for some commercial companies.
  - szerr0221 7y ago
    FYI some companies use people to transcribe the speech in real time, its faster than taking a phone call with all the extra pleasantries.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    If I was a cynic I'd say they seem to be remarkably efficient at doing the things we don't want and much less so the things we do.
malka 7y ago
as a french, I cant wait for them to be out. They spent the last 50 years trying to sabotage the EU. They want to leave ? Good riddance.
- martin_a 7y ago
  I'm totally with you. I wonder if UK should have left the EU even earlier and saved themselves and us a lot of hassle. I hope that the EU-friendly states might join again, but I think they would need to break up the UK for that, don't they?
  - arethuza 7y ago
    It could all get very messy - I think it is is highly likely that Scotland will want a second independence referendum as a major argument for staying in the union the last time was that it meant Scotland would stay in the EU. However, I also think the current government is also unlikely to allow a second referendum, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Scottish Government decided to have one anyway. Edit: To be clear: I mean messy legally/politically - not anything worse.
    - toyg 7y ago
      Yeah, it’s going to be Catalunya all over again. Except Scotland is not a little province, and if the SNP is forced underground, stuff will start to blow up for real.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        Support for Scottish independence is greater in England than it is in Scotland. The U.K. isn’t Spain, the English are no more likely to keep the Scots in by force than the Canadians were going to keep Quebec in by force.
        smcl 7y ago
        That's nonsense. Some English might claim indifference or scoff at the idea of an independent Scotland. In reality however the UK is more a part of their identity than it is ours - Scotland splitting away literally kills off the concept of the "UK". Force wouldn't even be needed however - Westminster can just brush off pleas for an independence referendum (they'll point towards the one we had a couple of years ago pre-Brexit ), there's no revolutionary movement and I really don't foresee one developing any time soon.
gingabriska 7y ago
UK along with its overseas territories are biggest investor in US stock.
- benj111 7y ago
  Isn't the US the biggest investor in US stock? Even if it's the largest foreign investor, that's not so surprising. It's the 5 largest economy in terms of GDP, the only ones bigger are the US, China (limited in how they move capital), Japan (luckily for their national debt, they prefer to buy domestic govt bonds), Germany (the only likely alternative for investing more). Also London is a major finance capital, so it could just be British banks buying US stocks with money from Russian oligarchs or whatever.
sma222k0n 7y ago
It's not the only trojan horse in EU https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/world/europe/germany-is-accused-of-helping-nsa-spy-on-european-allies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/world/europe/germany-is-a...
mtgx 7y ago
Of course it is. You could note it from all the US-friendly legislation they've been pushing within the EU. It's one of the reasons I was glad Brexit happened. The UK was usually the most important nation members pushing for surveillance laws in the EU and then have the EU share that data with the US.
gadders 7y ago
You say it like it's a bad thing. The UK has a lot more in common politically and philosophically with the US than the EU. TBH they should rename NAFTA to the North Atlantic Free Trade Area and we'd all be better off.
- dangerface 7y ago
  >The UK has a lot more in common politically and philosophically with the US than the EU. Not even close, let's take a basic fundamental US principle like the right to free speech, it doesn't exist in the UK. The UK has had relation ships with most of the European countries for longer than the US has existed. The UK has more import and exports with the EU that the US and because of geographic constraints this will not change Brexit or not.
  - gadders 7y ago
    >>Not even close, let's take a basic fundamental US principle like the right to free speech, it doesn't exist in the UK. Sadly, this is correct, but I believe the UK has less constrained speech than continental Europe. I'd love to see a right to free speech brought into force in the UK >>The UK has had relation ships with most of the European countries for longer than the US has existed. This is also true, but neglects the fact that US was founded by Britain and was a British colony for 170 years. US law is based on English common law.
  - gnode 7y ago
    > US principle like the right to free speech, it doesn't exist in the UK. The UK has a right to freedom of expression in both common law and the Human Rights Act (incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights). There are many exceptions, but that's also the case for the First Amendment of the United States' constitution. Both the UK and US have defamation laws, criminalise real threats, Official Secrets Act / Espionage Act, gag orders, etc. One could argue there is a better right to free speech in the US, and that it has stronger legal protections, but it's by no means absolute or beyond comparison with that of the UK.
    - 7y ago
rado 7y ago
As they ask in Polanski's "The Ghost": Has the UK ever acted against US interests?
zahrc 7y ago
Can you elaborate on this?
newsgremlin 7y ago
I recently discovered a documentary: "The Spider’s Web – Britain’s Second Empire". Highlights that as much as 25% of the worlds wealth is held in offshore and onshore British jurisdictions. The Russians have nothing to do with Trump or Brexit, in my view the connections have been fabricated to seem real only to turn out to be dead ends that don't lead directly to the Kremlin in any meaningful way, both of these events have stifled democracy and social progress. The negative effects will only hurt the population and not the corrupt and nontransparent institutions. The US and UK look like the least likely countries in the world to start a revolution. The powers at be know this, and we the people know this to an extent.
fpalmans 7y ago
Can't the UK still unilaterally decide to stay?

draugadrotten 7y ago

This begs the question if UK/EU got a copy of all the US citizens ' fingerprints in return. It is possible to commit treason against your own country. Can someone commit treason against the EU? Is it a criminal offense?

digitalengineer 7y ago
Yes, when you’re a whistle blower (no joke). http://www.againstchildtrafficking.org/2018/06/roelie-post-the-life-of-a-whistle-blower-2/ http://www.againstchildtrafficking.org/2018/06/roelie-post-t...
billsmithaustin 7y ago
There isn’t a database of every US citizen’s fingerprints.
- patrickmcnamara 7y ago
  Nor is there in the EU. The only government that has my fingerprint is the US, despite being an Irishman.
  - vinay427 7y ago
    Right, but it's worth mentioning that unlike the US and perhaps Ireland, countries in the Schengen area are required to issue passports containing fingerprint data, though most (all?) do not have a centralized database of citizens' fingerprints. The Netherlands planned to create a centralized store but it seems to face public opposition.
    - swebs 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure modern USA passports require fingerprint data. They at least have the pokeball symbol signaling that it contains biometrics.
      - 7y ago

daviddumenil 7y ago

This is a misleading title. The UK government gave access to US companies. There's currently no suggestion that the data moved to the US. More details here: https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 https://euobserver.com/justice/145530

xpuente 7y ago
Surprise. The bits can be in two or more places at the same time. You known... the magic of "cp"
sudoaza 7y ago
By US law companies are obligated to reveal any data they are ordered to and many times do that illegally also.
empath75 7y ago
The US companies were working for the UK government as well, i think.
dangerface 7y ago
You are posting a false narrative according to your own link. > UK made illegal copies of classified personal information from a database reserved for members of the passport-free Schengen travel zone. Why?
- tzs 7y ago
  His link says that the UK made copies, and that private contractors hired by the UK government such as IBM were given access. IBM, and most other firms that the UK government likely uses as contractors, have offices and data centers in the UK. I didn't notice anywhere in his link that said that anyone moved copies of the data to the US.

miahi 7y ago

The title is incorrect. The Schengen Information System does not keep data for "all EU citizens", it only keeps such data for wanted persons, missing/stolen identity documents or objects (like cars, boats and so on). There is no centralized database for EU citizens photos or fingerprints (not even at national level in many countries).

pknight 7y ago
>There is no centralized database for EU citizens photos or fingerprints (not even at national level in many countries). "The database will aggregate the details of more than 350 million people, including their identifying information, such as names, passport number, dates of birth, as well as biometrics like fingerprints and facial scans." https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3074472/eu-parliament-votes-to-create-biometrics-database-of-350-million-people https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3074472/eu-parliament-v...
- yaris 7y ago
  The link suggests that this was announced in April this year. Do you think all the necessary DBs have already been connected? I would expect it to happen next year earliest.
  - pknight 7y ago
    I suspect it's nowhere near live yet, but it's relevant to this topic. There will be a massive new database and it's a terribly unlikely that this data will not be leaked or shared at some point.
  - powi88nxjdi 7y ago
    So what if it was announced in April? Do we really believe we ca trust these groups with this data? This is like the Vogons justifying blowing up a planet because the paperwork was filed years ago. It’s not about the details. It’s about trust in institutions and I’m pretty sure we can see we should have none with these official bodies and the corporate buddies they give our work away to

BlackLotus89 7y ago

It would be actually nice if someone had the foodnotes. I will be happy when the UK is brexed out, but someone has to take responsibility for this.

an_ko 7y ago

Anyone have a less sensationalist primary source link? I'd like to see backed up facts, not outrage bait.

ddebernardy 7y ago
The tweet is the primary source. See who signed the letter. The story referenced in the first point is: https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 The second point raises a non-answer by the EC that led to the EP letter and the tweet.

hestefisk 7y ago

As a Danish citizen I’m deeply concerned about this and am strongly considering an FoIA request and lawsuit for lack of disclosure... if this is really true.

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cat199 7y ago
> FoIA honest question: Does this exist in EU or UK?
- bpye 7y ago
  This very much exists in the UK [1] - I cannot speak for the EU as a whole. [1] - https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request
- lucb1e 7y ago
  In Dutch it's WOB and from German and Dutch colleagues I heard it's a thing there as well. I don't know of an EU country that doesn't have it. I thought it was an EU regulation, just like GDPR is mandatory to implement, but I can't find anything about it and our law is from 1991, so I guess it might not be after all.
- hestefisk 7y ago
  Yes. In Denmark we call it ‘aktindsigt’.
miahi 7y ago
As the data in the SIS is classified, it's not covered by FoIA or GDPR requests.

sgt101 7y ago

The give away is (twitter.com) - nothing from that source is even close to true.

Zenst 7y ago
Only recently it was the the best source of the whole VLC issue. Sure twitter has it's issues, anything of scale with that level of user-base will and you get truths, lies and twisted statistics. Why the better media outlets have standard about two independent sources (BBC one example), however I'm mindful that you can get second sources that are just an echo-chamber of the first and it steam-rolls from there - VLC a good example again upon that.
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zoobab 7y ago
Maybe check who is the author of the Twitter post...

submeta 7y ago

I reckon the five eyes were sharing these kinds of infos for years. After the Snowden revelations I tend to think that there ain‘t no info about us citizens that the three letter organizations don‘t have or cannot have. Phone call logs, personal infos, medical records, everything we can think of. If they are interested in something, they‘ll get it. Sucks big time. But it seems ain‘t nothing we can do about it.

submeta 7y ago
The thing is: The moment you feel you could be observed or that you have no room for private thought or discussion, you start to censor yourself. Political discourse starts to get weakened. My gut feeling is this: Many people don't dare to express their true opinions even in supposedly private channels, fearing that these thoughts / ideas might come back at them years later. And I don't even mean radical thoughts. In a world where we non-americans are asked for our cellphone passwords, laptops, social media handles and passwords, how can we dare to criticize world affairs? Or imagine you are a young ambitious person who wants to change something by participating in the political process. You spend years getting somewhere, and then comes an info out of nowhere about your past and stops your carreer abruptly (like you cheated on your university diploma or something like that).
- carapace 7y ago
  > Many people don't dare to express their true opinions If there's one thing the Internet has taught us is it not that most people's "true opinions" are merde? I don't like it either, but I think we have hope of stabilizing on a kind of "greatest common denominator" of behaviour, but only if the systems that do the surveillance are self-referential: they must apply to the powerful as much as the little guy.

Iwan-Zotow 7y ago

Putin is laughing hard...

dang 7y ago
Please don't do this here.

dangerface 7y ago

> UK made illegal copies of classified personal information from a database reserved for members of the passport-free Schengen travel zone. The UK is not in the Schengen travel zone and had no right to be accessing the data or sharing it with other foreign powers. The problem is that too much power is collected in one place that encourages bad actors to weaken security so that they can later do a grab and dash with "Plausible deniability". When people raise this warning it is dismissed as fear mongering, when the fears turn out to be justified people side step the issue and argue that the title should be millions instead of all. Some people have argued that the EU do not have a database of EU citizens fingerprints, but they have been building that database since 2004 [2]. These massive databases of personal information represent too much of a risk and should not exist. The only way to protect power from corruption is to distribute the power rather than consolidate it. [1] https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 https://euobserver.com/justice/145530 [2] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-fingerprints/fingerprints-in-european-passports-legal-eu-court-idUKBRE99G0FX20131017 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-fingerprints/fingerprin...

cromulent 7y ago
The UK has a special arrangement to see the stolen vehicles, arrest warrants, etc. It can't see the Schengen entry / non entry alerts. https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/schengen-information-system_en https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/border...
- miahi 7y ago
  Not all person alerts are entry/no entry alerts, so they don't access (or don't react to) a small subset of the person data.
miahi 7y ago
Other countries that are not in the Schengen area do have access to the SIS. Their access rights were given by them signing various agreements (the status is quite complex, you should check the SA status[1] for more details). Yes, the title should be millions. Of mostly missing or wanted persons or lost passport and national IDs. Not sure how you would propose to ensure the security of a zone without a massive database of people that are not desired in that zone or documents that should not be used because they are reported as lost by their owners. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area

sailfast 7y ago

Reading the actual memo in the Tweet, it says that US Companies contracted by the UK were provided access to the data. So, as a made up example, [Massive US-based multinational consulting firm - IBM was listed in the euobserver article)] was contracted to do work for the UK government in this specific area and was provided access to the data (probably after being cleared to do so via a lengthy process that is typical for contracting with governments). Do we have any indication that this data was "copied to the US" in this memo, instead of being worked with in accordance with data security policies to keep it in the EU / UK? That said - if the UK is making illegal copies that's bad, but I wouldn't overreact to the submission title which is not correct.

jotm 7y ago

While this is bad and they should increase the security of this data, for now, I don't see how it would affect EU citizens. Any ideas? If you applied for a visa to the US, they already have your photo and fingerprints (hell, they had mine before my own country, before biometric passports). If not, what can they possibly do with that information?

dandare 7y ago

Is this news? > Schandal already made public in 2018: (link: https://euobserver.com/justice/141919 https://euobserver.com/justice/141919) euobserver.com/justice/141919 https://twitter.com/Ellen_Timmer/status/1154720007089266688 https://twitter.com/Ellen_Timmer/status/1154720007089266688

davengh 7y ago

Reading the comments in this thread and others, it seems to me that a lot of people want to argue about how many canaries have to die before the threat to the miners is taken seriously. That any of the Schengen information made it to the US at all is a dead canary.

scarejunba 7y ago

I wonder how much the ICO is going to fine them.

jeffk_teh_haxor 7y ago

The threat to privacy and security is more fundamental than anything that can be remedied by a GDPR nastygram.

guest 7y ago

wait a minute, you mean to tell me that governments spy on each other? holy shit, stop the fucking presses! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srK5-95VcaQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srK5-95VcaQ

ChuckMcM 7y ago

Wouldn't be the first time someone about to leave the company exfiltrated a bunch of proprietary information they wouldn't have access to after they left. :-)