First....
First they came for the immigrants ....
The European Parliament voted last night to build the world's largest biometric database, but only after ensuring that the police would not have free access to it. The Visa Information System (VIS), which the European Commission has already started building, is expected to record the fingerprints and mugshots of 20 million visa …
Given the other article on El Reg at the moment regarding ICO's Audit of HBoS, there are some concerns here.
This article about the EU Biometric Database states that each country's relevant data protection agency will regulate access to this database and monitor it for misuse. But it is obvious that the ICO have zero power as outlined in the HBoS article. Even if the database was abused, ICO have no power to do anything except tell the responsible parties off. Which is hardly going to deter any future abuse of this system.