Schlagwort: Europol

Surveillance of 5G: Governments plan to change laws

5G telephony makes communication more secure. Connections, subscriber and device identifiers are partly encrypted, also conventional IMSI catchers become useless. Providers could therefore be forced to install new surveillance technology.

With Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), the fifth mobile phone generation (5G) decomposes the transmission of telephone calls into individual stages and and encrypts them. Telecommunications providers no longer process the traffic centrally, but via various network edges. The metadata and content is only decrypted at these decentralized nodes.

That means that with 5G telephony, communication becomes much more secure. This poses a problem for police forces and secret services. „Surveillance of 5G: Governments plan to change laws“ weiterlesen

Internal security in the EU: „Moving from data collection to data connection“

The European Union intends to further strengthen operational cooperation and exchange of information between police authorities. The focus will be on upgrading Europol, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

According to a paper by the Romanian government, Europol’s mandate and capabilities should be further strengthened. The police agency will therefore be developed into a „law enforcement information hub“.

The proposal was made within the framework of the EU Council Presidency, which Romania held in the first half of the year. Since 1 July, the European Union has been led by Finland, where the issues are dealt with further. „Internal security in the EU: „Moving from data collection to data connection““ weiterlesen

EU surveillance state

The EU is increasing the surveillance in its Member States. US authorities could soon also wiretap legally in Europe

The new European Parliament is to be constituted in September, after which the EU Commission will be re-elected. The governments of the member states use this phase to put far-reaching surveillance measures on track. This week the Justice and Home Affairs Ministers debated this on their Council meeting in Luxembourg.

Data retention is right at the top of the agenda. EU-wide, Internet and telephone providers are to be forced to store data on customers and their communications for years. If necessary, these could later be queried by police authorities or secret services. Although the European Union adopted a corresponding directive in 2006, it was declared invalid ten years later by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). As a result, many member states issued national regulations that differ in the depth of intervention or storage period. „EU surveillance state“ weiterlesen

Upload filters: Europol is creating facts

The planned EU Regulation on the removal of „terrorist content online“ has no longer made it through the legislative process; in autumn the newly elected parliament will decide on it. The governments hope that the MEPs will then vote in favour of tightening up the legislation.

On 12 September, the EU Commission presented its proposal for a for a Regulation on „preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online“. It was to be voted on in an urgent procedure under the current EU Parliament, but was not able to make it through the necessary trilogue procedure between Council, Parliament and Commission.

According to the Commission and Council, the regulation would force Internet service providers to remove „extremist“ and „terrorist“ files as quickly as possible. To this end, the law enforcement authorities are to issue removal orders which must be complied with within an hour. This applies to videos, images, text files or entire websites. „Upload filters: Europol is creating facts“ weiterlesen

German Police launches „National Internet Referral Unit“

Europol has requested the removal of Internet content in almost 100,000 cases. The companies adressed are responding to a considerable extent. The German BKA has now also set up a contact office, which has sent almost 6,000 reports since its short existence and cooperates closely with Europol, also about „smuggling crime“.

The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) maintains a registration office for the removal of Internet content. The „National Internet Referral Unit“ has been in operation since October last year. Since then, the BKA has already sent 5,895 reports on suspected criminal content to Internet companies. That writes the Federal Ministry of the Interior in the answer to a set of parlamentarian questions. „German Police launches „National Internet Referral Unit““ weiterlesen

Interpol and Europol extend facial recognition

The two police organisations are using new capabilities to search biometric images. Investigators can mark persons or things and match them with other files. At the G20 summit, the Hamburg state data protection commissioner criticised this procedure.

In the „INTERPOL 2020“ project, the international police organisation is expanding its facial recognition capabilities. After a test run, the Interpol General Secretariat in Lyon/France set up a new biometric database two years ago. According to information from the German Ministry of the Interior last October, the database contains more than 120,000 data records with photographs. The file can be searched with the „MorphoFace Investigate“ software, which has been used by Interpol for years to investigate child pornography. „Interpol and Europol extend facial recognition“ weiterlesen