URL: Latest posts
Parliamentary oversight of security and intelligence agencies in the EU
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One of the reasons for the lack of posts on this blog the past months is that I co-authored this large study (446 pages), together with Aidan Wills, for the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE). The s...
Two fundamental privacy problems with the SWIFT agreement and Europol’s role in it?
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EUROPOL’s Joint Supervisory Body recently performed its first inspection at Europol regarding the TFTP Agreement, which entered into force in August 2010. The TFTP Agreement gave the JSB a new task – to monitor whether Europol respects the pr...
EU Commission Proposes Mandatory Transfer of Passenger Name Records
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The European Commission has proposed a Passenger Name Record Directive that would require airlines to provide EU Member States with data on passengers arriving from, or departing to, countries outside the EU. Under the proposal, copies of such PNR da...
Council of Europe: need for a global consideration of the human rights implications of biometrics
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The CoE’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights is “increasingly concerned about the rapid and uncontrolled development of biometric technologies”. It stresses the need to strike an appropriate balance between security and the...
Tightening links between the external and internal aspects of EU security
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A note from the Hungarian EU presidency to the Standing Committee on operational cooperation on internal security (COSI) describes the desires of the Presidency to tighten the links between the external and internal aspects of EU security. On t...
MEP calls for impact assessment of EU counter-terrorism policies
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MEP Sophie In’t Veld called for a thorough evaluation of EU counter-terrorism policies at a recent meeting of the European Parliament. She criticized in particular “costly high-tech surveillance and data gathering programmes” . R...
New European Commission proposal on the use of PNR data in the fight against terrorism
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The proposal aims to harmonise Member States’ provisions on obligations for air carriers, operating flights between a third country and the territory of at least one Member State, to transmit PNR data to the competent authorities for the purpose of...
EDPS sets out his vision for the EU’s new data protection framework
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On 14 January 2011, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) issued an opinion on the Commission’s Communication on the review of the EU legal framework for data protection. In the EDPS’ view, the major driving forces of the review...
European Arrest Warrant update
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- Revised version of the European handbook on how to issue a European Arrest Warrant (128 pages, pdf)- Implementation of Framework Decision on the application of the principle of mutual recognition to confiscation orders (country-by-country, pdf)- Fr...
Classification systems of terrorist threat levels in the EU Member States
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This Council document of 20 December 2010 compiles an overview of the systems and classifications used by the EU Member States including an explanation on how the threat levels are defined and which structure is responsible for changes in the l...
Three new EDPS reports
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Opinion on the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) Opinion on the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council...
Think tanks report on “forging a strategic US-EU partnership”
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The paper includes recommendations such as Establish a transatlantic arrest warrant Establish joint investigation teams, including Europol and Eurojust Collaborate on security-related research Launch a public-private Global Movement Management Initia...
New report on the European Arrest Warrant
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This week Fair Trials International has published a new report on the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). The report is part of FTI’s response to the Government’s review of the UK’s extradition arrangements, which are being examined by an independen...
EU, US seek regulatory convergence on future technology
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EU Observer reports that the US and the EU are hoping to construct an 800-million-citizen-strong market with converging regulatory regimes whose standards will set the benchmark for product rules the world over. At a meeting of joint EU-US Transatlan...
CEPS Brief: Protecting Critical Infrastructure in the EU
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Download the paper here. Critical infrastructures such as energy, communications, banking, transportation, public government services, information technology etc., are more vital to industrialized economies and now than ever before. At the same time,...
New European Commission proposal would give Fundamental Rights Agency powers in judicial and police cooperation
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The objective of the Commission’s proposal was to amend the Multi-annual Framework for the Agency in order to allow it to pursue its tasks in the areas of judicial cooperation in criminal matters and police cooperation. As the Commission points...
