Parliamentary oversight of security and intelligence agencies in the EU

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 study came out today, and also includes a number of attachments written by national [...]

Analysis of proposed PNR Directive

Read it here.

European Commission Operational Guidance on taking account of Fundamental Rights in Commission Impact Assessments

Read it here.

Two fundamental privacy problems with the SWIFT agreement and Europol’s role in it?

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 provisions of personal data protection principles in the TFTP Agreement when deciding on the admissibility of the [...]

EU Commission Proposes Mandatory Transfer of Passenger Name Records

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 data held on an airline’s reservation system would be transferred to a dedicated “Passenger Information Unit” [...]

Council of Europe: need for a global consideration of the human rights implications of biometrics

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 protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially the right to privacy. In its report, the Commitee says: Given that at [...]

Tightening links between the external and internal aspects of EU security

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 the list is: * Enhancing the exchange of personal and strategic information and criminal intelligence between EU [...]

MEP calls for impact assessment of EU counter-terrorism policies

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” . “The European Parliament has been constantly calling for a thorough evaluation of EU counter-terrorism measures. Why is it that in other areas, [...]

New European Commission proposal on the use of PNR data in the fight against terrorism

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 preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting terrorist offences and serious crime. It does not require air [...]

EDPS sets out his vision for the EU’s new data protection framework

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 process should be as follows: The EDPS suggests introducing a mandatory security breach notification covering all [...]