Stormont Justice Bill permits the state to keep your data for a lifetime
The Justice Bill currently passing through the Northern Ireland Assembly will allow the police to retain a person’s biometric data for a massive 75 years. This is despite the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) previously ruling that indefinite holding of such information is a violation of privacy. 75 years may not be indefinite, but it’s essentially a lifetime, meaning the difference is largely moot. More worryingly, the bill allows the state to keep information such as fingerprints and DNA for most of a century in cases of “terrorism-related” offences. This could include cases of inviting “support for a proscribed organisation”.…
