"ELECTRONIC KEY" TO FORTRESS EUROPE
In an attempt to deal with expected consequences of regulations in the Schengen Agreement introducing stringent measures of control at external borders (frontiers with non-EC states), the German Federal Government is preparing the introduction of "automatised personal checks" at borders. Frequent travellers eager to escape long queues and delays at airports can have their "biometrical measurements" registered in an electronic data base. In return they are promised speedy clearance at border checks.
Business circles and tourism industry have expressed concern about possible impedements to international travel as a result of the Schengen regulations on external border controls. So far, mere random checks are usual at airports and other external borders. But once the Schengen Agreement in force, every single traveller entering or leaving EC-territory is to be submitted to a thorough identity control including not only travel documents, but also electronic data matching with the central register of criminal investigation and the SIS (Schengen Information System).
Even the German Interior Ministry appears to be worried about the prospect of long queues and traffick delays and therefore offers businessmen and other frequent travellers to participate in the test run of a new electronic system for automatised personal checks.
The somewhat unusual offer of the Interior Ministry: Apply at the border police for the voluntary, non-recurring electronic registration not only of your personal data including your passport or ID-card number, but also of your "biometrical characters" such as finger- and handprints, or the measurement of your hands. In return, you will be authorised to flit by queues of ordinary travellers, and place both your machine readible passport and your hand on the respective marked surfaces of a computer. The device reads the ID-data, compares them with the biometrical data measured by a laser ray and matches the information obtained with your data in the central register. After a few seconds a green light will indicate that you may pass the revolving gate.
Similar automatised systems are currently tested at the Amsterdam-Shipol and New York-Kennedy airports. In these tests, however, voluntaries feed a smart-card of the size of a credit card with their personal data into the computer. The smart-card system requires no central registration of the personal data and nobody other then the holder of the card has access to them.
But the German system is operational only through central registration, thereby technically permitting access to third users.
In a first stage the system is to be introduced at Frankfurt airport, and only EC citizens may participate in the test. But if successful, the "electronic key to Fortress Europe" will also be offered to third country nationals - on condition however, that they come from states with "no or low risk of immigration".
If definitively introduced, the automatised control systems will lead to a two class clearance system at borders and further increase discrimination of certain categories of non-EC nationals.
The project is met with some scepticism by the former federal ombudsman for data protection, Alfred Einwag, who retired in June. The new system could mark the beginning of a "completely new practice of control", Mr. Einwag says and demands for guarantees excluding any other use of the data stored in the system than for its initial purpose of border control. In a paper addressed to the parliament, Mr. Einwag further expresses some doubts about the alleged "voluntariness" of registration in the system. Confronted with the unpleasant prospect of never-ending queues, travellers might well sense a "factual constraint" to "voluntary" registration.
He further finds fault with the fact that parliament was not incorporated in the planning of the project by the Interior Ministry and the border police.
The Frankfurt test run has also drawn angry reactions from a number of MPs. An FDP (liberal) MP, Wolfgang Lüder, stressed that the setting up of a biometrical database went much further than an earlier governmental project, rejected by parliament on data protection grounds, to introduce compulsory personal code numbers. A PDS (socialist left) MP predicted that the system would provide a "case study of Apartheid made in Schengen" and the Green MP, Ms Ingrid Köppe labelled the Interior Minister's refusal to inform parliament as "further evidence for the democratic deficit reigning in the field of the Schengen Agreement".
Researchers of the Bremen based Institut für Informations- und Kommunikationsökologie (IKÖ) warned that the system tested in Frankfurt could easily be extended to a "boundless surveillance of travellers". IKÖ fears that, in the long run, the introduction of the system will lead to the compulsory registration of all travellers and will be used for criminal prosecution purposes. The computer experts further denounce the very mentality behind extensive databases as the planned automatised border check system which, they say, amounts to "everybody being a suspect and everything needing to be controlled".
Sources: TAZ, 24.6.93; Berliner Zeitung, 17.6.93 For further information contact: Jan Kuhlmann, IKÖ/Fachgruppe Datenschutz, c/o Bremen University, FB Mathematik/Informatik, Bibliotheksstrasse 1, D-W-2800 Bremen 33, Tel: +49/421 2182833, Fax: +49/421/2183308.