As eloquently expressed in this forum before, the defence of our civil liberties is now a war on two fronts. While the UK government pushes ahead with new ways to stockpile our personal data and watch us at every street corner, the European Union is quietly getting on with establishing its very own Europe-wide version of the surveillance state.

Despite the stalwart efforts of groups such as Statewatch, most people, including in the media, have not yet woken up to this. Perhaps it is the sheer scale of the erosion of citizens' freedom in the UK that leaves the majority numb to anti-privacy developments that are already well underway in Brussels.

Through the use of CCTV, UK citizens are among the most surveilled in the democratic world. Our DNA is collected and stored by the state at five times the rate of the next highest EU country (Austria), and telecoms service providers are obliged to hold records of our phone calls, emails, and text messages for 12 months.

But it is precisely because of the UK's advances in this area that we must now pay better attention to what is happening in the EU. The bigger the UK's DNA database, for instance, the more information available to authorities across Europe, since the UK has now agreed to grant EU member states access to it. The EU is also due to create its very own central database designed to store vast amounts of biometric data and, in the commission's own words, the "largest 10 fingerprint system in the world".

With the imminent ratification of the EU's Lisbon treaty, the EU will be given the green light to go ahead with more initiatives that pose a serious threat to our civil liberties.

In fact, as noted by the House of Lords EU committee, "Some of the most controversial changes introduced by the treaty of Lisbon are in the area of freedom, security and justice." The committee believes that the effect of the loss of national vetoes "will be an increase in union activity and the volume of legislation agreed in this area", and that, for the first time it will be possible to take member states to the European court of justice, "for failure to implement properly EU legislation in the area of criminal law and policing."

To reflect this expected rise in legislation, justice and home affairs is one of the "growth areas" of the EU budget. According to the European commission's website, this part of the budget will receive the biggest boost in spending next year, increasing by 13.5% to almost €1bn.

Once Lisbon is finally ratified, it will be full steam ahead. Plans are already underway for a fledgling EU "Home Office" which has been dubbed the committee on internal security. It will decide how national police, border, immigration and criminal justice authorities should deal with cross-border issues throughout the EU.

Other initiatives in the pipeline include a target to train a third of all police officers across the EU in a "common culture" of policing; controversial surveillance techniques including "cyber patrols"; an EU "master plan" on information exchange; the transfer of criminal proceedings among EU member states; access to other member states' national tax databases; and EU laws on citizens' right to internet access, among many other things.

You can read about them in more detail in Open Europe's new briefing "How Brussels is watching you – the rise of Europe's surveillance state".

When the treaty was being negotiated, the UK government insisted it would be able to pick and choose which EU justice and home affairs policies it opts into, presenting this as a victory for the British "national interest" in negotiations with our dastardly EU neighbours. But in practice, the UK has been all too happy to drive controversial policies through at the EU level, safe in the knowledge they will avoid proper attention in parliament and the media.

It was the UK that pushed for the EU's data retention directive, which requires the destination of our very phone call, email, and text message to be recorded. It is our government that is calling for sensitive personal data collected by airlines and other travel companies – which can include details of racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, trade union membership or even information on the health or sex life of the individual – to be shared across the EU and with the United States. And it was the Blair government that backed the creation of the controversial European arrest warrant, which has increasingly been used to extradite people from the UK for minor offences and even, for the arrest of a Briton with a conviction attained in her absence.

But wherever the impetus is coming from, the EU will increasingly be the theatre for the most controversial threats to our liberties, and that is seriously bad news for democracy. If you think rolling back the "state" seems difficult now, it will be near impossible once 27 governments are involved and the European commission becomes "guardian" of the whole project. Civil liberties campaigners must now up the ante, and get on the Eurostar.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/nov/02/europe-surveillance-state

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