EU Surveillance Studies Disclosed By Pirate Party

Spliffster writes "The German Pirate Party has disclosed some secret documents on how the EU is planning to monitor citizens. The so called INDECT Documents describe how a seamless surveillance could (or should) be implemented across Europe. The use of CCTV cameras, the Internet (social networks), and even the use of UAVs are mentioned as data sources. Two of the nine documents can be downloaded from the German Pirate Party's website (PDFs in English)."

Comments

They have an "ethics board"

[Animats]

The project has a 10-member "ethics board".

• 2 members are cops.
• 1 member is a retired cop.
• 1 member is a "human rights lawyer" who works for a police department.
• 1 member is a criminologist
• 4 members are involved in developing the technology.
• 1 member is a professor of ethics at Oxford.

Re:Not secret

[ludwigf]

Those documents aren't secret. They were released to the public by the INDECT project itself, ages ago. Right here!

Look again. The "D1.1 Report on the collection and analysis of user requirements" is not public available though the link you posted.

Re:What??

[Kiuas]

You missed something extremely important there.

Already, the majority of laws in Europe come from Brussels

I'm sorry, but that is just flatout wrong.

The majority of trade laws and laws relating to agriculture/production come from Brussels. But even under the Lisbon treaty the EU has no power whatsoever to impose criminal laws on its member nations. Therefore, even if the EU wanted to force police-state like control over its citizens, it has no means of doing so. EU does try to promote international police co-operation through Europol but Europol is just an organazation transfering and managing information, it has no rights to do arrests or search homes etc - all it can do is try and help local police forces to locate wanted high-profile criminals by relaying information from foreign agencies.

Don't get wrong, I'm as worried as the next /. about these kinds of projects but despite all the scaremongering the EU isn't quite as scary as you seem to think it is.