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 Guardian reports about a new daughter-company of the UK Supermarket chain Tesco, that is selling very detailed information about every household and every person in the UK to the highest bidder. The database called Crucible contains "A map of personality, travel habits, shopping preferences and even how charitable and eco-friendly you are." And even if you don't shop at Tesco's, by combining data about for example magazine subscriptions from other sources such as Experian, Claritas and Equifax, the company has, in its own words collected a "massive pool" of consumer data. The company also uses government information, such as the electoral roll, which contains names, ages and housing information.

The two reporters from the Guardian started with an information request, on data collected by the company through the Clubcard (the Tesco loyalty

In the first week of October the European Commission will publish a proposal for a Council Framework Decision on the protection of personal data exchanged by courts and police under the Third Pillar in EU Member States. Statewatch published a draft version earlier this week.

The framework decision will allow the EU to move forward with plans for full cross-border access to police databases under the "principle of availability". The Council has become increasingly eager for a proposal to be agreed, calling in July for the Commission to present proposals by October at the latest.

The proposal would create a similar regime to the existing 1995 Data Protection Directive, which applies to First Pillar (single market) legislation. It would ensure data is processed for specific purposes for a

European Digital Rights, together with a number of other international digital rights organisations, is organising two panels on data retention and on biometrics, as a pre-event to the annual DPA conference in Montreux, Switzerland on 13 September 2005.

It is widely expected the Chair of the Article 29 Working Party, Peter Schaar, will close the meeting with a vehement statement against the current proposals for data retention. This statement might well follow the lines of a recent opinion written by the Dutch chair of the Data Protection Authority, Jacob Kohnstamm. He specifically addresses the two types of cases which according to the Erasmus study require data retention: International criminal investigations and long-lasting research into organised crime.

Kohnstamm writes: "Where international criminal investigations make very slow progress, streamlining procedures and formalities for obtaining international legal assistance should be pursued energetically. A mandatory extension of the retention period for traffic data does not offer a logical solution to the problem." And when investigating organised crime "one should first check whether this type of investigation is given sufficient priority by the police and the prosecutor's office, before deciding on new far-reaching powers." If the priority is high enough, the police can use many other powers, such as bugging conversations and wiretapping telephone lines, according to Kohnstamm.

The French newspaper Le Monde has a number of articles on new plans from the French government for anti-terrorism legislation. On 6 September the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin presented a rough impression of 16 new measures to the members of parliament. The package will be presented to the Council of Ministers in October 2005.

Some of the proposed measures are:

-An extension of the scope of camera surveillance, to include the possibility to film the public streets in front of certain organisations that 'are exposed to the risk of terrorist acts'. In this context, specifically synagogues and confessional schools are mentioned, but local authorities may also order industry and public transport to do the same. Le Monde bluntly states that this intention clearly shows that terrorism is used as a pretext by de Villepin, since he tried to introduce such broader surveillance powers before he became Prime minister. The camera images will have to be kept for 1 month.

In order to convince the European Parliament of the need for mandatory data retention, the UK presidency of the EU has challenged the validity of the European Convention of Human Rights. The UK Home Office secretary, Mr Clarke, basically told the European Parliament on 7 September that the 50 year old convention was outdated. Talking about the need "to balance important rights for individuals against the collective right for security", Clarke said: "The view of my Government is that this balance is not right for the circumstances which we now face – circumstances very different from those faced by the founding fathers of the European Convention on Human Rights - and that it needs to be closely examined in that context."

Clarke was specifically referring to the difficulty under the Convention of deporting people suspected of being involved with terrorism, but obviously thought it was acceptable to attack the general principle of protecting citizens against their governments by granting them inalienable minimum rights and freedoms.

The September edition of the German industry magazine Die Bank contains renewed speculation about the introduction of spy-chips in the Euro banknotes. The article discusses three possible new measures against the counterfeiting of the notes; a new biological paint, a colour-switch foil and the introduction of RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification Devices) on every note. The Hitachi Mu-chip, with its 0.18 micron size, is mentioned as a likely candidate, as reported earlier in EDRI-gram. Though the current price of approx. 7 eurocent per chip might be prohibitive, the article also mentions a new invention by Philips to integrate the chip in the paper completely.

The way the chip would work, is by storing a 38 digit number that cannot be changed later on, containing both the unique serial number and data

The European Commission has started infringement procedures against the governments of Austria and Germany for not creating adequate independence of the Data Protection Authorities.

In Austria, the Commission was alerted by a complaint from the data protection association Arge Daten in October 2003. On 5 July 2005, the Commission responded by instigating official proceedings against the Republic for a faulty implementation of Article 28 (1) second sentence of the data protection directive (95/46/EG) which requires that data protection authorities shall exercise their functions with complete independence.

The Austrian Data Protection Commission is, in terms of organisation and staff, integrated in the Federal Chancellery and its managing member is a senior official of the Chancellery.