Europe after the attack of "Charlie Hebdo" - more surveillance and censorship?

Posted by: raminta 9 years, 9 months ago

(1 comment)

The beginning of the year 2015 has brought much of blood to Europe. Tragic events strongly threatened the safety of Europeans and were related to a widely spread key word "terrorism". As a result, the leaders of European countries have begun discussions on new measures preventing terrorism and targeting the protection of privacy and the freedom of expression.

Passengers’ surveillance

The EU officials and heads of the states promptly reacted to the attack of "Charlie Hebdo" headquarters and recalled the proposal on the Directive on the use of Passenger Name Record data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime (PNR Directive), which was finalised by the EU Commission in 2011 and for three years has been stuck in the European Parliament's LIBE committee.

The PNR Directive suggested the creation of the common Passenger Name Record System which would impose a duty to the air carriers to transfer data about passengers to the countries of their departure and arrival. This system would consist of the whole information collected by flight companies such as the date of a travel, destination, contact information, seat on the plane, accompanying persons, information about the luggage and even food orders on the plane.

Usually such data is used by flight companies for their commercial purposes but already for more than ten years governmental authorities are also looking for a way to access this data for the investigation of crimes and for data exchanges.

According to the PNR Directive, governmental authorities would keep the PNR data for five years and would give the access to the pre-trail institutions to analyse this data and to identify persons who are arriving or leaving EU countries. Such data could be transferred to other EU states as well.

It looks that the PNR system would be very useful to the pre-trail institutions and could successfully prevent terrorism, but would the access to all passengers' data be legitimate and proportional? Discussions about not sufficient necessity and legitimacy of the measures proposed by the PNR Directive, indefinite list of crimes and a too long data retention period were raised in 2013 by the LIBE committee which has stopped the further negotiations on this proposal. In August 2014 the European Council called the European Parliament to move on the PNR Directive and after the attack of "Charlie Hebdo" the Council's voice became stronger which lead to the European Parliament's decision to finalise negotiations and to take the decision before the end of this year.

While the discussions on the common EU PNR system are ongoing, several European countries (e. g. the United Kingdom and Belgium) are already surveilling the passengers. The passengers are also surveilled by the United States, Australia and Canada with whom the EU has signed agreements on processing and transfer of PNR data. Moreover, the EU Commission did not give any attention to the doubts about the necessity and legitimacy of the PNR system and in 2012 offered financial support of more than 50 billion Euros to 12 EU countries which should create national PNR systems.

One of these countries is Lithuania which has received around one million Euros. The Lithuanian Minister of Inner Affairs is convinced that fighters fighting in conflict zones may arrive in Lithuania and may threaten the national security, therefore, at the end of 2014 Lithuania has initiated the creation of the national PNR system. According to Mr. S. Skvernelis, "PNR is the main tool which can prevent terrorism. The so-called fighters from Syria and Ukraine very often are also the EU citizens, therefore it is important to surveil the EU passengers and in this case the personal data protection becomes less important as the protection of lives."

Such given reasons may seem to have strong basis but one should take into consideration that there is no data about the effectiveness of such measures. Besides, recent judgments in the United States and in the United Kingdom on the blanket surveillance confirmed that such activities were illegal and violated the right to privacy.

Surveillance of encrypted electronic communications

Another measure aiming at the prevention of terrorism, which has been highlighted, is a broader and more active surveillance of electronic communications. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, got worried that terrorists are exchanging encrypted information on the Internet and suggested to ban the use of encryption or at least to give the possibility to pre-trail institutions to read the encrypted data.

Encryption is considered to be almost the most secure mean for electronic communications. Encrypted emails cannot be read by persons who do not have encryption keys. Moreover, encryption is used for cyber security reasons as well: in e-banking, and e-commerce. E-mail systems also encrypt all data before their transfer on the Internet that they would not be intercepted and some websites keep encrypted passwords and other data about their users on their databases.

In such context, Mr. D. Cameron's idea to ban encryption seems to be absurd and it is not surprising that very soon it was declined.

Hence, the idea to give the possibility to pre-trail institutions to read the encrypted information was heard by the European Council. The leaked documents confirmed that the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, encouraged the EU Commission to discuss the possibilities and conditions in which internet and telecommunication providers would give encryption keys to the pre-trail institutions.

Nevertheless, such measures also raise many concerns and seem not to be complaint with the European data protection standards. Moreover, it is doubtful if they are going to be effective as criminals will not be willing to be surveilled and traced and they will stop using encryption. So, the ones who will suffer the most will be ordinary people whose electronic communications will be intercepted.

Blocking and censorship on the Internet

The European willingness to encounter terrorism has affected the freedom of expression as well. The solidarity march in Paris on the 11^th of January, 2015, has been concluded with the Joint Statement by the EU ministers encouraging the Internet service providers to monitor, register and remove information inciting hatred and terror from the Internet more actively.

Right after this Statement Mr. G. de Kerchove has offered to the EU Commission to deepen the engagement with the internet companies encouraging them to participate in limiting the circulation of terrorist material online. In his mind, EU countries should establish an excellence agency similar to the UK Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU), which would look for terrorist and extremist content which breaches the platforms’ own terms and conditions. He suggested that such task could be performed by Europol. Therefore, the EU Commission should examine legal and technical possibilities to remove illegal content and make proposals for a common approach and should consider ways to speed up the process in obtaining the cross-border information about owners of IP addresses.

As one could expect, the most famous Internet censor in Europe, Turkey, right after the terrorist attacks became very sensitive to the insults of religious symbols and with the court order indicated Facebook to block pages insulting the Prophet Mohammed. Even it is hard to believe, but a similar only easier way has been taken by France. The French Government acquired a right to block websites suspected to be inciting terrorism even without a court order. Such governmental powers raised many concerns about it's capabilities to evaluate information published online. Moreover, a threat of illegal blocking of websites is broadly discussed as well.

All these measures confirm that the EU countries are determined to stop terrorism. Nevertheless, it is not clear if they are going to be effective or if they would simply limit the protection of privacy and the freedom of expression of ordinary people due to the so-called "public security" and the facilitation of pre-trail institutions' daily work.

This article has been prepared and published in cooperation with the Human Rights Monitoring Institute, a Lithuanian NGO defending human rights.

Image courtesy of jacinta lluch valero, Flickr.com

• ← Europa po „Charlie Hebdo“ atakos: sekimas, stebėjimas ir cenzūra?
• Lithuanian ban on Russian TV: is it effective? →