In a report titled " Threatening the Open Society: Comparing Anti-terror Policies and Strategies in the U.S. and Europe" and released on 13 December 2005, Privacy International compared the anti-terrorism approaches in the U.S. with those in Europe. The report finds that on every policy involving mass surveillance of its citizens, the EU is prepared to go well beyond what the U.S. Government finds acceptable, and violates the privacy of citizens.

The report is highlighting the differences between EU and US in terms of access to communications data, retention of communications transactions data, data profiling and data mining, access to passenger reservation files and biometric registration and is concluding that in each case the EU is implementing surveillance powers well beyond those in U.S., and with far

The French government has decided to apply the urgency procedure to a new anti-terrorism draft law, with only one reading by each Chamber. The draft law was already passed by the National Assembly (French Lower House) on 29 November 2005 and will be examined by the French Senate in late December or early January 2006. The proposal creates increasing powers for the police and the intelligence services, thus undermining the protection of formal judicial procedures.

The law will extend the use of video-surveillance, authorising private parties to install CCTV cameras in public places "likely to be exposed to terrorist acts", and in places open to the public when they are "particularly exposed to risks of aggression or theft". Obviously, this covers almost any public or privately-owned place, including shops. In case of emergency, CCTV cameras may be installed prior to any authorisation.

The sixth edition of Swiss Big Brother Awards ceremony was held in Zurich's Rote Fabrik on 29 October 2005. The Swiss jury received 100 nominations in four categories: government, business, workplace and the special life-time achievement award. The financial services branch of Swiss Post, Postfinance, was awarded the business award for the illegal transfer of bank transaction data to the United States. The transfer became apparent after a Swiss man tried to transfer an amount in US dollars to a Cuban travel agency based in Switzerland. Both bank accounts were registered in Zurich. Although the man assumed the transfer was purely domestic it turned out that Postfinance uses its US partner Western Union for all transactions in US dollars. The man was notified that the US Department of the Treasury had confiscated his money because of the US embargo against Cuba. Postfinance advised him to send a protest to the US authorities in order to get his money back. So much for the Swiss bank secrecy.

The UK ID card proposals have come closer than ever to defeat in their final House of Commons vote. The government's majority shrunk from the previous vote by 11 votes to 25, despite several concessions over cost and claims to improve privacy protection.

The legislation now moves to the House of Lords, where it is certain to face sustained attack from the House's majority of Conservative, Liberal Democrat and independent peers. The close vote in the Commons will encourage the Lords in their efforts to amend and defeat the Bill. Debate is likely to take place at the end of October 2005.

The Government continues to claim that the scheme is "voluntary" and would not hold detailed personal information. In the current version, it would not be compulsory to buy or carry ID. However, the Bill leaves open the

Since the introduction of compulsory identification in the Netherlands on January 1st 2005, the police have fined 50.000 people that could or would not present a valid ID. Almost 4.000 of those who were fined were children aged 14 and 15. The statistics are provided by the Central Judicial Collection office.

About 25% of the people fined do not pay the 50 euro fee (or 25 euro fee for children between 14 and 16 years old). These cases are presented to the local courts. On 28 September the court of Utrecht chose to create a marathon session for the first 250 cases. Only a quarter of the people appeared. Most of them were men that were involved in minor offences, such as driving without belt or peeing in public. One of them was really upset about the case. To the national RTL News he said: "Everybody can see I am Dutch and not a terrorist!" During the session there was a small demonstration in front of the court. The participants demanded withdrawal of the law, because it does not increase security and only causes double fines.

The Dutch ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport plans to introduce a new electronic file on every new-born, starting in January 2007. The file will contain information about the child, the family situation and its surroundings, later adding educational data, information from social workers and possible police records. The file will be principally maintained by youth doctors and medics working for the child public health care service. The file will be connected to the citizen service number, a new electronic ID for every Dutch resident and citizen replacing the old social-fiscal number. Secretary of State Clémence Ross explained: "Medics can easily trace the development and situation of a child and thus get a clear picture of its need for care. They can also see which other institutions work or have worked with a child. The electronic childfile

The German Upper House approved on 8 July the introduction of biometric passports. The 'ePass' will contain a contactless chip (RFID) that will hold a digital frontal picture of the bearer's face. In the future, two fingerprints, one from each hand, will be included - probably starting in 2007. The issuing of the biometric passports is expected to begin in November 2005.

The picture and fingerprints in the chip will be compared with those of the holder of the passport. This will make it possible to establish that the passport really belongs to the holder. During border checks the data in passport can also be compared to federal police watchlists. Currently, there is no plan in Germany to create a central database to store the biometric data.

To facilitate privacy of the data and secure it against unnoticed reading or capture of the transmission, public-key cryptography will be employed. Reader devices at the border also integrate keys. These shall only live for a few weeks, so that stolen reader devices cannot be successfully used to steal data over a prolonged period of time.

A coalition of 6 French organisations against the French biometric card project INES (among them EDRI-member IRIS, see EDRI-gram 3.11) remains convinced that 'no consensus is possible' to accept the project if modified according to the suggestions made by the Internet Rights Forum ('Forum des droits sur l'Internet' or FDI, a private association mainly funded by the French government.) The Forum was asked to organise a public debate about the project. The results were published on 16 June 2005 and presented to the French ministry of Interior.

The FDI organised both online and off-line debates between February and May 2005. Public meetings were held in 6 main French towns, and the online forum collected over 3000 messages from 683 unique contributors. In addition, a poll was conducted amongst a representative sample of 950