[loopbit]

Maybe that data doesn't exist in your country.

In mine, the police has the picture and fingerprints of everyone older than 12 years old and any younger person that needed an ID card for whatever reason, travelling being just one.

Maybe that information has been shared with that database, maybe it hasn't. I have no way of knowing. Other EU countries have the same level of information about their citizens (and some record even more data).

Can we simply agree that what the UK has done is bad, should be investigated and, if true, the people resposible should face charges for it? Or should we spend days arguing about what information might/might not have been copied and how many people have been afected?

[Symbiote]

I'm downvoting all the comments about "my country" without saying which country that is.

No useful discussion can result from comments like this.

[loopbit]

A bit late to the discussion, but does it really change that much if, instead of "my country", I say "Spain"?

In this case Spain hasn't done anything wrong (the data gathering for the id cards was done before entering the EU and complies with EU's regulations[0]). Other EU countries gather less or more data according to their specific legislations.

The country in question here is the UK and, to a lesser extent, the US. Specifics about other EU countries are, IMHO, irrelevant.

[0] Another question, for a different discussion, is if they should record all that data.