Woolas brings the border to Wythenshawe
Article published: Thursday, February 19th 2009
A spy centre that will track every person in Britain is coming to Manchester, report Andy Bowman and Tim Hunt
It has emerged that a controversial government database is to be housed on an industrial estate in Wythenshawe.
New Labour are building the installation to track and hold the international travel records of the entire population of Great Britain – over 60 million people. This announcement comes hot on the heels of government plans to monitor every email, text and phone conversation in the country and has once again raised fears over civil liberties.
According to The Guardian, the centre will house over 300 police and immigration officers.
A similar number of technicians will help check travellers details against police, MI5, benefit agency and other government watch lists. The centre will be run by the UK Identity and Passport Service, with input from HMRC, MI5, MI6, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the police.
The centre was previously called the Joint Border Operations Centre and has been collecting limited passenger information since October 2008. The information gathered was limited to selected routes and travellers and was kept on a pilot database run at an office in Hounslow, west London.
Now renamed as the e-Borders Operations Centre, it will store names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit card details for all 250 million passenger movements in and out of the UK . The data will be retained for 10 years.
Under the scheme, once a person buys a ticket to travel to or from the UK by air, sea or rail, the carrier will deliver that person’s data to the agency.
In future, all such data will automatically be sent in bulk to the new database, instead of being released in response to specific requests by the authorities.
The location of the new database was a Whitehall secret but Home Secretary Jacqui Smith accidentally let slip that it is in the Manchester area. All staff have now been instructed to refer to it only as a new operations centre in the North West.
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas defended the plans. “The UK has one of the toughest borders in the world and we are determined to ensure it stays that way. Our high-tech electronic borders system will allow us to count all passengers in and out and target those who arent willing to play by our rules,” he said.
But campaigners have raised serious concerns over privacy. They have questioned government guarantees over information safety when they have already failed to conceal the location of the facility.
And civil liberties groups have warned once again about the emerging police state and the high cost of the scheme.
Clare Rodgers from human rights group Liberty told MULE: “Families everywhere are minding the pennies while government is pouring millions of pounds into watching us mind our own business. They should be monitoring genuine suspects, not turning Britain into a suspect nation.”
Donna Chambers of libertarian campaign group Manchester No Borders commented: “With the e-borders centre in Wythenshawe, Phil Woolas has managed to bring another programme of population control right onto our doorstep.”
More: Manchester, News
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