A protocol signed today between the Government, the National Statistics Institute and Portugal’s Tourist Board (the state, the state and the state) will lead to a budget allocation for statistical studies into tourist movements across the country’s borders.
The International Tourism Survey is based on work done in 2010 and raises questions about privacy, database security and the misuse of data by police and government departments such as the Tax Authority which, as has been proved, are not to be trusted with potentially sensitive information.
"We want to estimate the number of residents and non-residents crossing the borders and find out what they are spending" according to Alda de Caetano Carvalho, the president of the National Institute of Statistics who will coordinate the project running from this June until late 2016.
At today’s signing ceremony, Carvalho explained that the information will be collected by covert means at observation posts at land border crossing point, airports, ports, and road, ‘among others.’
"We want to know how many residents and non-residents cross the borders and how much they spend,” said Carvalho, stressing the importance of statistics for decision-making by entrepreneurs and policy makers but not stressing the fact that once data exists, governments are loathed to destroy it, usually on the grounds of ‘national security.’
Carvalho said much of the data will be collected automatically from mobile phone records and by photographing the registration plates of vehicles and photographing vehicle passengers as they cross the Portuguese border.
Before this happens there needs to be a change in data protection legislation, admitted Carvalho, adding that he is hopeful this change could happen across the European Union.
At the ceremony, the Secretary of State for Tourism, Adolfo Mesquita Nunes, spoke of the "confidence" the Government has in the statistics produced from the National Institute, while Secretary of State for Administrative Mobilisation, Joaquim Cardoso da Costa welcomed the return of the obligation for companies such as mobile phone operators to hand over statistical information.
In one protocol the country is planning to sweep back the curtain of time to pre-1974 when this sort of data was collected by the state to the detriment of its citizens.
Electronic surveillance at borders is nothing new but to suggest that this type of information is being collected only ‘for statistical purposes’ is disingenuous, whatever the protestations of those involved in signing this devious protocol.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine, European leaders discussed whether to reintroduce identity checks within the EU's free travel zone.
Spain, France and Germany in particular were pushing for curbs on passport-free travel and the confusion and delay over the identification of the victims of the Germanwings Flight 9525 air crash will add pressure to alter the Shengen rules at Europe's borders as currently no record of passports and ID cards is required.