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The first worldwide protests against surveillance measures such as the collection of all telecommunications data, the surveillance of air travellers and the biometric registration of citizens were held on 11 October 2008 under the motto "Freedom not Fear - Stop the surveillance mania!". In at least 15 countries citizens demanded a cutback on surveillance, a moratorium on new surveillance powers and an independent evaluation of existing surveillance powers.

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In spite of the recommendation of the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, that the minimum age for fingerprinting should be 14, a spokesperson from the European Commission (EC) expressed on 2 April 2008 the EC intention to push for fingerprinting children starting at the age of six, in order to include the information in the biometric passports.

Jacques Barrot, the Justice, Freedom and Security Commissioner, considered that "The proposals we put forward are balanced ones", explaining that fingerprinting was an important tool in fighting human trafficking.

During the meeting on 12 February 2008 the high-level Strategic Committee on Immigration, Frontiers and Asylum (SCIFA)/Mixed Committee discussed the age

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On 18 March 2008, Peter Neyroud, the chief executive of the UK National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), told the Commons Home Affairs Committee, during the final evidence session of a year-long inquiry on the surveillance society, that the police was developing a national database of mugshots to be used with face recognition technology that would match CCTV images with offenders.

A pilot system has started with three local police forces that have gathered during the last 18 months a database including more than 750 000 face images. About 7.7 million euro has been allocated so far on developing the technology that will be nationally launched in 2009.

Neyroud stated that he hoped to have the beat police equipped with advanced

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Mr. Richard Thomas, UK Information Commissioner warned Heathrow airport operator BAA that the plans to fingerprint all passengers at the new Terminal 5 may breach the UK Data Protection Act.

The 5.5 billion euro worth Terminal 5 was opened by the Queen on 16 March and is due to receive its first passengers on 27 March 2008. The airport plans to apply security measures that involve fingerprinting all passengers including domestic ones claiming fingerprinting was necessary so that all passengers could mix freely in Terminal 5 shopping mall area. Fingerprinting is already being applied for domestic passengers at Terminal 1. The passengers place a hand on a scanner which records four fingerprints and

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Welsh Assembly Government proposal for a "smart card" to be used to access public services in Wales was considered by civil liberties groups as a way of introducing identity cards "through the back door" and was rejected by the Liberal Democrats supported by the Labour Party members as well.

The Government has claimed that the card was aimed at improving the way people use library and travel services but Suw Charman, founder of the EDRi-member Open Rights Group, considers the scheme as "pointless". "I haven't seen an argument about what's wrong with the existing cards. (...) Why do we need to put all this information on one smart card that's going to keep a log on what people do and where they go? It's treating people like

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UK-based human rights group Privacy International (PI) published at the end of last year the 2007 ranking assessment of the state of privacy in 47 countries, including all European Union member states.

The raking is based on the Privacy & Human Rights reports produced since 1997 by PI together with US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and is taking into consideration several criteria such as constitutional & statutory protection and privacy enforcement, biometric ID cards, data-sharing, video surveillance, communication interceptions and data retention.

According to the authors, the project wants to "recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the

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A proposal for the creation of a centralized database of fingerprints from all 27 EU countries was included in a new European Commission document that sets out the goals for 2008.

The fingerprints database is to be operational by the end of 2008 and it will include sensitive information that could be shared with third parties, such as US law enforcement authorities.

This proposal, considered as a Big Brother type of initiative, has raised the opposition of the sceptics as well as supporters of EU being seen as a trap of a super-state as well as a threat to civil liberties respectively.

"The European Union is gaining criminal justice powers very rapidly. The problem is that one thing leads to another and that setting up centralised

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In a decision published on 13 March, the Conseil d'État, the French highest administrative court, cancelled the ministerial order ("Arrêté") by which the Interior Ministry created the ELOI file, a database aimed at facilitating the expulsion of illegal migrants. On 2 October 2006, four French NGOs filed this case against the Interior minister: CIMADE and GISTI (two associations defending the rights of migrants), LDH (the French Human Rights League), and French EDRI member IRIS. While the database creation itself is allowed by the French code on immigration and asylum (CESEDA), the NGOs argued that the ELOI file would contain excessive and inadequate personal data on the foreigners themselves, their children, the citizens with