Tag: Greece

  • Pistols and ammunition: Frontex chooses weapons manufacturer from Austria

    Pistols and ammunition: Frontex chooses weapons manufacturer from Austria

    With a “Standing Corps”, the European Union has a uniformed and armed police unit for the first time. Whether Frontex is allowed to buy, store and transport weapons at all, however, is controversial. A planned loan agreement with Greece has…

  • EU drones for people in distress: Dropping life rafts for pullbacks?

    EU drones for people in distress: Dropping life rafts for pullbacks?

    For the first time, drones are flying on behalf of an EU agency with rescue equipment on board. On the high seas, the actually useful technology could encourage illegal refoulements to countries like Libya. Perhaps the new function will only…

  • Frontex and Europol: How refugees are tracked digitally

    Frontex and Europol: How refugees are tracked digitally

    EU agencies advise increased confiscation and extraction of asylum seekers’ mobile phones and now provide a manual on how to do so. Apps to encrypt or disguise locations are disliked in the report as “countermeasures” to surveillance. Often the mobile…

  • New camps in Greece: Panopticon for refugees

    New camps in Greece: Panopticon for refugees

    A “hotspot” for asylum seekers is opening on Samos, which inmates describe as “Guantanamo”. The EU Commission finds such facilities dignified, and therefore finances them completely. The pilot project will be monitored with motion detectors, behavioural recognition and drones. Two…