The Shape of Things to Come?

Seven years after 9/11 and the launch of America’s “war on terrorism”, a report released by British civil liberties group Statewatch today examines the proposals being set out by the High-Level Advisory Group on the Future of European Home Affairs Policy (the Future Group) as part of the EU’s new five year strategy for justice and home affairs and security policy for 2009-2014.

Established in February 2007 by the Council of the European Union to draft recommendations on future European home affairs policy after the end of the Hague Programme in 2010, the Future Group presented its final report – Freedom, Security, Privacy – European Home Affairs in an Open World – at the Justice and Home Affairs Council’s July 2008 meeting. This is set to be the groundwork for a new justice and home affairs programme for 2010-2014, following the Tampere programme (1999-2004) and the Hague programme (2005-2009).

Analysing the Future Group’s proposals, including the “unquestioned adoption of the EU surveillance society and a proposed Euro-Atlantic area of cooperation with the USA”, and looking at their relation to existing and planned EU policies and their impact on civil liberties, Statewatch’s report, The Shape of Things to Come, argues that European governments and EU policy-makers are “pursuing unfettered powers” to access, gather and retain masses of personal data on the everyday lives of EU citizens in the name of security.

The proposals laid out by the Future Group include a range of measures including new surveillance technologies, enhanced cooperation with the United States and harnessing the power of the “digital tsunami” for the benefit of law enforcement and security agencies – in other words (to quote from the EU Council presidency paper): “Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will generate a wealth of information for public security organisations, and create huge opportunities for more effective and productive public security efforts”.

The implications of this statement alone are, as Statewatch puts it, "breathtaking". Following the 2004 EU Directive, governments across the European Union have adopted (or are adopting) national laws for the mandatory retention of every individual’s communications data – all forms of communication (phone-calls, faxes, mobile calls including locations) – which will be extended to keeping a record of all internet usage from 2009. Though few might be aware that this is happening, this effectively enables law enforcement and security agencies to access all traffic data (in the UK, access is already automated). Access to the content should, under national law, be authorised – though state agencies have had the technological capability to access content for years.

When traffic data including internet usage is combined with other data held by the state or gathered from “non-state sources” (tax, employment, bank details, credit card usage, biometrics, criminal record, health record, use of e-government services, travel history etc) a “frighteningly detailed picture of each individual’s everyday life and habits can be accessed at the click of a button”. This harnessing of the “digital tsunami” by public security organisations means that expected behaviour can be assessed by "machines" on the basis of which directions are given to state officials on the spot.

Statewatch’s report concludes that the EU has rejected wholesale the idea that personal data relating to EU citizens should be kept private from state agencies, in favour of the principle that the state should have access to every last detail about our private lives. Data protection and judicial scrutiny of police surveillance are perceived by the EU as “obstacles” to efficient law enforcement cooperation, the report argues.

Statewatch also draws attention to what it calls the ‘security-industrial nexus’ – the continued utilisation of measures adopted by the EU and national governments in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 said at the time to be temporary, "exceptional", but necessary due to the "war on terrorism". Seven years later, argues Statewatch, and the "exceptional" has become the norm.

“What is much clearer now” their report observes, “is that 11 September 2001 was used to accelerate a process that was already underway. Globalisation and its ‘technological revolution’ – nurtured by Western states and developed by multinationals – [were] ready to break out of the constraints imposed by liberal democratic values”.

“Notions of privacy and data protection espoused as basic values stood in the way of progress. The welfare state, where a benevolent state protected and cared for the people, has been replaced by the market state requiring the social control of market forces, unhindered by rights and regulations. In place of serving the people, the state now serves the interests of international capital. Moreover, the “war on terrorism” presented a massive opportunity not just to use its monopoly of information technology but to apply it to new, highly lucrative, areas: The surveillance of travel and communications, new systems for data-sharing, data-mining, interpreting behaviour, the collection of biometrics and readers to check them. The construction of EU-US standards to record, check and hold people’s travel records is intended to set standards which will be laundered to set global standards too – and new markets for the West’s multinationals to pursue and profit from”.

Other areas of concern highlighted by Statewatch include the extent of the consolidation and extension of police powers at the EU level, from mandatory communications data retention to the continued expansion of agencies such as the European Police Office (Europol), the EU prosecutions agency (Eurojust), the fledgling EU border police (Frontex) and the planned Standing Committee on Internal Security (COSI).

But how, asks the report’s author, Tony Bunyan, are we to be safe from the state itself?

According to Bunyan “there is now only a slim chance that the political elites in Council of the European Union, the European Commission, national governments, the law enforcement agencies and the multinationals will change course – they have already invested too much to allow a meaningful public debate to take place”.

“This is because they actually believe that technology, not values and morality, should drive change. They believe they have balanced freedom and security when all with eyes and ears to see and hear know that liberties and freedoms have been made subservient to the demands of security”.

“The national and European states require unfettered powers to access and gather masses of personal data on the everyday life of everyone in order so that we can all be safe and secure from perceived "threats". But how are we to be safe from the state itself, from its uses and abuses of the data they hold on us?”

“The outrageous proposal that the EU should tie itself in with the USA across the whole justice and home affairs field will place our privacy and civil liberties in great danger. If we do not have an open and meaningful debate now we never will, because by then it will be too late.”

Read the full report (pdf) at:

http://www.statewatch.org/analyses/the-shape-of-things-to-come.pdf

For further information:

00 44 208 802 1882

e-mail: office@statewatch.org