Schlagwort: Europol

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

Fight against small drones: Police use military technology

The police and military are increasingly confronted with the unwanted use of commercially available drones. For countermeasures, they must be quickly detected and analyzed. German arms companies have developed various methods to then combat the aircrafts.

Every year, around one million small drones are sold in the USA and Europe alone. This figure was quoted last week by the Deputy Director of the German Federal Armed Forces Aircraft Technical Service (WTD 61) during a technical demonstration at the department’s headquarters in Manching. This refers to multicopters with four or more rotors carrying a camera or other sensors, sometimes also called unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

In Germany, the owner’s data must be affixed to a sticker on the device. In many countries, however, the sale or use of unmanned systems is not regulated, which can also make them a „terrorist tool“ for the military in the field. The German government writes that small UAV’s have „proven to be a versatile technical aid in the planning, execution and evaluation of operations by terrorist organisations“. In the meantime they have been used for „airborne reconnaissance and espionage, to identify potential weak points in the run-up to attacks as well as to direct plunging fire“. „Fight against small drones: Police use military technology“ weiterlesen

„Crawling, monitoring and gathering“: EU funds search engine for criminal Internet content

European police authorities and arms companies are working on a „powerful terrorism intelligence platform“ on the Internet. It is intended to track down material to promote violence and radicalisation. The technology thus goes far beyond the threat of upload filters.

In the security research programme „TENSOR“, the European Union is developing automatic detection of criminal content on the Internet. The technology is to find material that can „contribute to the advancement of terrorist violence and radicalisation“ in an automated process. On the project website, this is referred to as „crawling, monitoring and gathering“. Described as a tool for „Internet penetration“, it should also operate in multilingual social media and use „dialogue-empowered bots“ with artificial intelligence. Found criminal content will then be categorized and interpreted so that it can be used by law enforcement agencies. The software would also be used in Darknet.

The project is the technical implementation of the demand for „early detection“ of terrorist organised activities, radicalisation and recruitment as called for by the European Union in the Council Conclusions and a Commission paper of 2017. It calls not only for the rapid removal of „illegal online content“, but also for its „proactive detection“. „„Crawling, monitoring and gathering“: EU funds search engine for criminal Internet content“ weiterlesen