I find it disturbing that this government has so readily adopted this agreement allowing for the remarkable incompetence they have shown with the introduction of anti-smoking laws. Where a driver in Scotland having had a smoke in his/her car in Scotland then becomes a criminal in England should he/she be foolish enough to drive said vehicle into England. That person now becomes an International criminal. Also DNA data of children it would appear not convicted of anything now becomes available to numerous agencies throughout the EU (And USA?). Who monitors these agencies?

Even our own data protection systems are nothing but a toothless stuffed ferret. ICO has no power to manage our own national privacy issues let alone opening up these systems to other countries. It has become painfully obvious that this is going to be nothing less than a dog's dinner of a balls up.

We have a situation in the UK where ICO have zero enforcement power, they have the right to slap companies on the wrist and they have the right to request a visit to inspect data retention systems, but that request can be denied by the intended parties. So what hope can we possibly have of ICO protecting our information from abuse by Law Enforcement and other Government departments both in the UK and EU?

I will be glad to finally get out of this fucked up country and move to Canada, although sadly I feel the only real escape from the global police state that is growing rapidly more powerful, will be the release that death has to offer.

And yet still the apathetic sheep of the world (yes you can read that as the public) continue to live in their short sighted little bubbles.

This is seriously fucked up.

I'm intrigued by the fact that we're going to share data with the Europeans, when most of our county-based police forces can't share data between themselves at the moment. They all seem to have their own little databases, in different formats, so if the Europeans want data they're going to have to ask each Constabulary individually.

Do you want your data been shipped off to Romania? How about Bulgaria? I don't trust this government to keep it secure, but I especially doubt Romanians can.

We are screwed.

Hi,

having failed to get a job in IT with an ethical company in the UK, I've decided to set up an off shore data store, where ever it's legal to aggregate all this private data being collected by our nice EU cousins. Then I intend to sell it to which ever British police force is having difficulty obtaining the data from their colleagues in the next county.

Reckon I could make a few bob before things go tits up entirely, anyone want a job ?

Alf