The West attempts hybrid resistance

The EU and NATO are training for their joint rapid response in the event of a crisis with three coordinated exercises. The simulated threat comes from Russia, hackers, the caliphate, immigrants and globalisation critics

On 1 September the European Union and NATO will start their shared „EU Parallel and Coordinated Exercise 2017“ (EU PACE17). This is according to a Council Documentpublished online by the British civil rights organisation Statewatch. The two alliances will test their crisis management structures over six weeks.

NATO is responsible for leading the exercise, the section organised by it is referred to as „NATO CMX17“. The NATO is also responsible for escalating hypothetical scenarios with daily „injections“. This also incorporates the „EU CYBRID 2017“ short cyber exercise, which will see EU defence ministers test the political reaction to cyber-attacks on 7 September in Tallinn, Estonia. The West attempts hybrid resistance weiterlesen

Database on “European extremists”: How is the plan pursued since 2001 supposed to function?

After each major summit protest, there are calls for a European “troublemakers” database to be established. Centralised data storage at EU level or decentralised networking of national systems would be conceivable options. For a number of reasons, it has not been possible to set up a database of this kind since the turn of the millennium. The governing coalition in Germany has now announced a new initiative to this end following the G20 Summit in Hamburg.

Cooperation on summit events between European security authorities has been running like clockwork for more than 20 years. Police and intelligence services have exchanged information on threats and “individuals who pose a terrorist threat”, have assisted each another with personnel and equipment and seconded liaison officers. Shortly before such summits, the Schengen Agreement is partially suspended and border controls reintroduced while travel bans are imposed on undesirable protesters. Database on “European extremists”: How is the plan pursued since 2001 supposed to function? weiterlesen

New data retention planned for border crossings of all European Union citizens

The European Union could soon save the date and place of each crossing of the EU’s external borders. Travellers’ identification documents would be read out and their biographical data saved along with information regarding border crossings. Police forces and intelligence services would have access to this data.

The European Commission published the final report of the High-Level Expert Group on Information Systems and Interoperability in May. According to this document, European border authorities could soon – unbeknownst to the travellers – be able to trawl through the travel routes of all nationals of EU member states. Alongside their biographical data, the system to be set up will log the direction in which borders are crossed. This new data repository on border crossings at all land, sea and air borders might form part of the Schengen Information System II (SIS II), which is the largest police and border authority database. Preference is being given to the establishment of an entirely new database, however. New data retention planned for border crossings of all European Union citizens weiterlesen

“E-smuggling”: Europol steps up efforts against online-assisted migrant crossings

According to the EU police agency, in the past year 17,459 people operated as “human traffickers”. In the majority of cases, refugees and their facilitators communicate using Facebook or Telegram. Seizing of electronic evidence is thus to take on a greater role in investigations.

Last year, the EU police agency Europol received reports of 1,150 social media accounts apparently used by refugees to facilitate their entry into or travel through the European Union. This information is based on figures (PDF) published by the European Migrant Smuggling Center (EMSC) at Europol for 2016. The number of incriminated accounts in 2015 was just 148.

The report does not differentiate between humanitarian assistance for refugees and commercial offers. It is also unclear how many of the accounts were reported to the online providers to be removed. According to Europol, the rate of compliance with requests for deletion among companies was around 90 percent. “E-smuggling”: Europol steps up efforts against online-assisted migrant crossings weiterlesen

Bundestag report finds flaws in the oversight of European intelligence services in The Hague

The Federal Ministry of the Interior is using every possible means to keep Parliament from learning details of the cooperation between European domestic intelligence services in The Hague. The official reason is an internal agreement between the services. Yet the Federal Government has an obligation to furnish parliamentarians with information, even when there is a legitimate interest in maintaining secrecy.

The Bundestag’s Research Services have produced an expert report on parliamentary oversight of European cooperation between the intelligence services. The background to this is the Federal Government’s continuing refusal to provide information about the activities in which Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is engaging in The Hague.

The report indicates that this secretiveness is legally questionable. It states that, although the Federal Government is permitted to safeguard its interest in maintaining secrecy, it must also seek ways of meeting the parliamentarians’ need for information. Bundestag report finds flaws in the oversight of European intelligence services in The Hague weiterlesen

Counter-terrorism and the inflation of EU databases

Heiner Busch and Matthias Monroy. Translation by Viktoria Langer

The topic of counter-terrorism in Europe remains closely linked to the development and expansion of police (and secret service) databases. This was the case in the 1970s, after 11 September 2001 and has also been the case since 2014, when the EU Member States started working on their action plans against ‚foreign terrorist fighters‘.

The first effect of this debate has been a quantitative one: the amount of data in the relevant databases has increased explosively since 2015. This can be seen by looking in particular at available data on the Europol databases, like ‚Focal Points‘ (formerly: Analytical Work Files) of the Europol analysis system. Since 2015 they have become one of the central instruments of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) which was established in January 2016. Counter-terrorism and the inflation of EU databases weiterlesen