DNA Data Deal 'Will Create Big Brother Europe'

Police across the EU are to be given free access to Britain's DNA, fingerprint and car registration databases in a move denounced last night as the creation of "Big Brother Europe". At a meeting in Brussels, the Home Office agreed to a deal that will set up a network of national crime records across 27 states. All member states will have access to other countries' DNA and fingerprint data, as well as direct online access to vehicle registries. The exchanges could be up and running as early as next year and might eventually lead to the creation of a single Euro-wide database. Police in one country will be able to find out whether another has data matching the profile of a suspected offender. But critics last night questioned whether access to the databases would have the same security safeguards throughout the EU. They also said British tourists fingerprinted in the UK as witnesses may find themselves sucked into foreign police investigations after innocently leaving prints, or DNA, at a location that later becomes a crime scene. British police have millions of fingerprints on file – and this number will grow when they are taken for passport applications from 2009. Britain also has by far the largest criminal DNA database in the world – 50 times the size of the French equivalent. When Labour took office in 1997, it held only 700,000 samples. By next year, it will hold the samples of some 4.2 million people – seven per cent of the population – and is growing by about half a million a year.