It is felt by certain organizations that the proposed £750m electronic British Border Control scheme breaches European data protection laws and the free movement of EU citizens.
Under e-borders all airline, ferry and rail operators must collect eight pieces of travel information including a passenger’s full name, date of birth, nationality, date of birth, passport number, passport-issuing country and passport expiry date. The information will be collected electronically from everyone entering and leaving the UK. It is also felt it will lead to longer queues for passengers travelling by rail and ferry to the continent
The results will then be passed to the UK and checked against security lists giving immigration officials early alerts.
This appears to be a similar scheme to API (Advance Passenger information) which was introduced a couple of years ago for all passengers flying into Spain and the USA.