The EU’s INDECT project: another threat to personal privacy

Thank you very much to friends in Brussels for drawing BBW's attention to the new INDECT project, a new EU-funded group which has been established in order to develop a platform for:

"the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of terroristic threats and recognition of serious criminal (“abnormal”) behaviour or violence. New techniques for intelligent analysis of data will allow recognizing such situations, and giving alert before it is too late. The objective is also to recognise danger events that could lead to terrorist attacks (e.g. left luggage at an airport, automatic recognition of dangerous tools)"

The INDECT project's website can be fund here.  It includes the (frankly rather scary) video below in which swashbuckling Eurocrats are seen quite literally saving the world from crime and terrorism. It looks like something out of Spooks:

At present, the project appears to be in its very early stages yet it has already attracted the attention of a group of privacy-minded MEPs (Alexander Alvaro, Carlos Coelho, Stavros Lambrinidis, Judith Sargentini and Rui Tavares) who have tabled a Written Declaration (the European Parliament's version of a Written Declaration) calling on the Commission to display "full transparency" in relation to the project.

The Declaration clearly calls on the Commission to uphold its obligation to "safeguarding the civil liberties of European citizens", expresses "concern about function creep, the possible impact on fundamental rights and the danger that researched technologies or collected information are used by public actors or third parties" and demands that the Commission "define a clear and strict mandate for the research goal, the application and the end users of INDECT".

You can download the Written Declaration here.  Please write to your MEP urging them to sign.

Hat-tip: JWH

For those with an interest in EU issues, you can find Big Brother Watch's submission to the European Commission's consultation on personal data protection in the EU here.

By Daniel Hamilton.