The Schengen Information System (SIS), is a governmental database used by European countries to maintain and distribute information on individuals and pieces of property of interest. The intended uses of this system are for national security, border control and law enforcement purposes. A second technical version of this system, SIS II, is currently under development for 2013, under the responsibility of the European Commission.
Information in SIS is shared among institutions of the participating countries in the Schengen Agreement Application Convention (SAAC). The five original participating countries were France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Twenty additional countries have joined the system since its creation: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Greece, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Currently, the Schengen Information System is used by 27 countries. Among the current participants, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland are not members of the European Union.
Although the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom have not signed the Schengen Agreement Application Convention, they take part in Schengen co-operation under the terms of the Treaty of Amsterdam, which introduced the provisions of Schengen Acquis into the European Union. Schengen Acquis allows the United Kingdom and Ireland to take part in all or part of the Schengen convention arrangements. Ireland and the United Kingdom use the Schengen Information System for law enforcement purposes. They do not have access to the Article 26D (former 96) data, because they do not intend to remove the border controls between themselves and the rest of Europe. European citizens still have the right of free movement to the UK, but they must pass through a border control point, unlike in the rest of the Schengen signatory countries, where internal border controls have been largely abolished.
Read more about Schengen Information System: General Description, History
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“Information networks straddle the world. Nothing remains concealed. But the sheer volume of information dissolves the information. We are unable to take it all in.”
—Günther Grass (b. 1927)
“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)