Central Register of Foreign Nationals (Germany)
The Central Register of Foreign Nationals (German: Ausländerzentralregister (AZR)) is a German database, containing personal information about approximately 20 million foreign nationals.[1] Of these, as of February 2009, approximately 4.5 million are EU citizens.[2]
The Central Register of Foreign Nationals provides data to over 7000 authorities and organizations, including police and customs authorities with over 80,000 users.[3]
According to section 26 of the law governing the Central Foreigners Register, personal data stored about individual foreigners in Germany can also be passed to the authorities of foreign states.[4]
History
The predecessor of the Central Register of Foreign Nationals was the Ausländerzentralkartei which was established in 1938 by the Nazi government.[5] In 1953 the Central Register of Foreign Nationals was established.
Criticism
The Federal office responsible for administering the Central Register of Foreign Nationals was awarded a Big Brother Award for their operation of the database, for the given reason of "institutionalized official discrimination of non-German citizens in Germany".[6]
References
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/20130710175234/http://www.bva.bund.de:80/nn_2142812/DE/Aufgaben/Abt__III/OeffentlicheSicherheitAuslaender/AZR/azr-node.html?__nnn=true. Archived from the original on July 10, 2013. Retrieved December 4, 2013. Missing or empty
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(help) - ↑ Federal Government of Germany: Drucksache 16/12569 - Speicherung von Unionsbürgerinnen und Unionsbürgern im Ausländerzentralregister (PDF-Datei; 71 kB). 6. April 2009
- ↑ "Bundesverwaltungsamt - Ausländerzentralregister". bva.bund.de. Retrieved 2015-08-13.
- ↑ "Gesetz über das Ausländerzentralregister (AZRGesetz)" (PDF). Gesetze-im-internet.de. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
- ↑ National Approaches to the Administration of International Migration, p. 75, at Google Books
- ↑ "Lebenswerk: Bundesverwaltungsamt | BigBrotherAwards" (in German). Bigbrotherawards.de. 2015-02-25. Retrieved 2015-07-09.