Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-13-Speech-2-317"
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"en.20060613.29.2-317"2
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"Mr President, Mr Vice-President, Mrs Roure deserves warm thanks for this report, which has already received deservedly appreciative comments from various Members. As I see it, all the groups have worked together to put together a really outstanding document, not least considering the fact that some of them had been working towards this sort of report and constantly stressing the need for one long before I was elected to this House.
The primary reason why this report is so much more urgently needed now than it was before has to do with the information age in which we are now living. It is worth bearing in mind that the total data stored by European authorities amounts, not to hundreds of thousands, or even to millions, but to billions of units of data touching upon the personality of every individual, in that the information stored could, with ill intent – which I am not, however, ascribing to any state – be brought together to compile profiles in order to find out what those citizens we disapprove of are getting up to. This report is made all the more urgently necessary by the prospect of these quantities of data increasing still further.
Systems such as EURODAC and APIS exist already, but are yet to be implemented, and the visa information system is in the course of being developed. SIS – the second-generation Schengen information system – is in place, and there may well soon also be, in the third pillar, the storage and transfer of information on air passengers, and so these billions of data units will increase still further.
To that one must add the Commission communication on interoperability and synergy and enhancing the efficiency of European databases, the effect of which in practice will be to connect these databases with one another, so that – once the technical problems have been overcome – the exchange of data will be made much simpler.
The problem is, though, that the people who want to protect this data, are often depicted as a bunch of crackpots who are incapable of rationally balancing fundamental rights against the right to security. Thank heaven this House has not, in this instance, allowed itself to be pushed into this sort of corner and forced to play off fundamental rights against security, for what definitely does endanger public security is a reduction in fundamental rights.
I am very grateful to Mrs Roure for saving us Liberals a great deal of work by incorporating an incredible number of amendments and proposals that originated from Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Commissioner, so that means that we are in full agreement.
This House has but few swords to hand, and I think Mrs Roure has realised that, but the willingness, if need be, to halt the progress of SIS and VIS shows just how important this report is."@en1
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