Those who will not see

I’ve got a post up at Liberal Conspiracy on the EU’s new ECRIS system.

Under ECRIS, local criminal records agencies will categorise crimes and sentences against particular headings (so 0801 is murder; 0403 is trafficking people for their organs; while on the sentencing side 1002 is life imprisonment and 3017 is confiscation of your hunting license), to make international criminal record searches a bit easier.

So when the German police arrest a Frenchman for pimping, instead of waiting for the French to fax through something that needs translating on his record, they’ll be able to see that the bloke was previously sent to a mental institution and had his hunting licence taken away for organ trafficking (or whatever).

Pretty much the entire libertarian blogosphere seems to think this is an outrageous plot to create, err, something or other, not quite sure what, but definitely evil. See the comments and links on the LC post.

The debate at DK, although not terribly edifying either, has produced one of the best lines I’ve read recently:

I didn’t know incest between consenting adults is legal in France. And there was me thinking Papa and Nicole were playing a very risky game.