[E-rundbrief] Info 398 - Arming Big Brother.

Matthias Reichl info at begegnungszentrum.at
Sa Mai 27 12:57:02 CEST 2006


E-Rundbrief - Info 398 - Ben Hayes (Statewatch, GB): Arming Big 
Brother. The EU's Security Research Programme. Transnational 
Institute (TNI)/ Statewatch report summary. April 2006.

Bad Ischl, 27.5.2006

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Arming Big Brother

The EU's Security Research Programme

Ben Hayes (Statewatch, GB)

Transnational Institute (TNI)/ Statewatch

Report summary

April 2006

Overview

This Statewatch-TNI report examines the development of the EU 
Security Research Programme (ESRP) and the growing 
security-industrial complex in Europe it is being set up to support. 
With the global market for technologies of repression more lucrative 
than ever in the wake of 11 September 2001, it is on a healthy 
expansion course.

The story of the ESRP is one of 'Big Brother' meets market 
fundamentalism. It was personified by the establishment in 2003 of a 
'Group of Personalities' (GoP) comprised of EU officials and Europe's 
biggest arms and IT companies who argued that European multinationals 
are losing out to their US competitors because the US government is 
providing them with a billion dollars a year for security research.

The European Commission responded by giving these companies a seat at 
the EU table, a proposed budget of up to one billion euros for 
'security' research and all but full control over the development and 
implementation of the programme. In effect, the EU is funding the 
diversification of these companies into the more legitimate and 
highly lucrative 'dual use' sector, allowing them to design future EU 
security policies according to corporate rather than public interests.

The ESRP raises important issues about EU policy-making and the 
future of Europe. Europe faces serious security challenges: not just 
terrorism, but disease, climate change, poverty, inequality, 
environmental degradation, resource depletion and other sources of 
insecurity. Rather than being part of a broader strategy to combat 
these challenges, the ESRP forms part of an EU counter-terrorism 
strategy focused almost exclusively on the use of military force and 
new law enforcement technologies. Freedom and democracy are being 
undermined by the very policies adopted in their name.

What is the 'security-industrial complex'?

The idea of a 'security-industrial complex' describes how the 
boundaries between internal and external security, policing and 
military operations, have been eroded. This process has been 
accelerated by the development of new technologies for the 
surveillance of public and private places, of communications, and of 
groups and individuals - a trend that has been accelerated by the 
'war on terror'.

These technologies include myriad local and global surveillance 
systems; the introduction of biometric identifiers; RFID, electronic 
tagging and satellite monitoring; 'less-lethal weapons'; paramilitary 
equipment for public order and crisis management; and the 
militarization of border controls.

Military organisations dominate research and development in these 
areas under the banners of 'security research' and 'dual-use' 
technology, avoiding both the constraints and controversies of the 
arms trade. Tomorrow's technologies of control quickly become today's 
political imperative; contentious policies appear increasingly 
irresistible. There are strong arguments for regulating, limiting and 
resisting the development of the security-industrial complex but as 
yet there has been precious little debate.

Europe's strangeloves: the Group of Personalities

The EU remained a purely civilian organisation until the Amsterdam 
Treaty in June 1997, which first paved the way for an EU military 
capability. Since then, a new security agenda has developed rapidly, 
driven forward by corporate lobbying in Brussels and, in particular, 
the backroom role that the major arms companies have played in 
policymaking (for more details, see Frank Slijper, The Emerging EU 
Military-Industrial Complex: Arms Industry Lobbying in Brussels, TNI 
Briefing 1, May 2005.

The ESRP is the brainchild of the Group of Personalities (GoP), a 
25-member advisory body of whom eight had direct roots in major 
arms-producing companies: BAe Systems, Diehl, EADS, Ericsson 
Finmeccanica, Indra, Siemens and Thales. Their report on Research for 
a Secure Europe, subsequently published in March 2004, highlighted 
the 'synergies' between defence technologies and those required for 
'non-military security purposes'. In its report, the GoP compared 
European security research spending with that of the US Department of 
Homeland Security, concluding that:

     A Community-funded ESRP ensuring the involvement of all Member 
States should be launched as early as 2007. Its minimum funding 
should be €1 billion per year, additional to existing funding. This 
spending level should be reached rapidly, with the possibility to 
progressively increase it further, if appropriate, to bring the 
combined EU (Community, national and intergovernmental) security 
research investment level close to that of the US.

The GoP's basic demand was that a European security-industrial 
complex should be developed to compete with that emerging in the USA. 
Instead of putting forward this and other policy options, the 
European Commission in its Communication of February 2004 - 
'Enhancement of the European industrial potential in the field of 
security research 2004-2006' - simply announced that a 65 million 
euro budget line for 'Preparatory Action for Security Research' 
(2004-06) had already been established, paving the way for a full 
European Security Research programme from 2007.

The Commission used Article 157 of the EC Treaty on the 
'competitiveness of the Community's industry' (rather than Article 
163(3) on 'research and technological development') to justify 
retrospectively the 'Preparatory Action on Security Research' budget 
- a clear breach of the Treaty that was criticised by, amongst 
others, the European Scrutiny Committee in the UK House of Commons.

European Security Research and the 'FP7' programme

The full European Securities Research Programme (ESRP) gets underway 
in 2007. The FP7 programme (the EU's seventh framework programme for 
research and technological development) currently being discussed in 
the European Parliament allocates € 570 million per year for 
'security and space' research (FP7). As ESRP is being developed 
outside of the normal EC decision-making process, it is so far 
unclear where the rest of the one billion demanded by the GoP will 
come from, but it is likely that additional FP7 money will be 
channelled into it via the ill-defined budget lines on 'ideas', 
'people' and 'capacities' (which account for €26 billion of spending 
from 2007 to 2013). Finally, FP7 will also provide an additional €1.8 
billion for research by the European Commission's Joint Research 
Centre (JRC), one of whose four priorities is 'related to fighting 
terrorism, organised crime and fraud, border security and prevention 
of major risks, in relation with law enforcement agencies and 
relevant EU services'. It is astonishing that the draft FP7 
legislation makes no explicit mention of the ESRP despite the 
security and space budget line being designed precisely for this purpose.

European Security Research Advisory Board

The European Security Research Advisory Board (ESRAB) was formed from 
the nucleus of the Group of Personalities to advise the Commission on 
the strategic goals and priorities for security research (including 
FP7), the exchange of classified information and intellectual 
property rights, and the use of these publicly owned 
research/evaluation infrastructures.

Once again, the formation of this new body lacked any transparency 
whatsoever, with no consultation of the European or national 
parliaments. ESRAB's membership was quietly announced in the EU's 
Official Journal, but with no background information or related 
documentation explaining who the members represent or why they were 
selected. Nor is there any detailed information about ESRAB on the 
Commission's security research website.

According to Statewatch and TNI's research, industry is very well 
represented on ESRAB, occupying 14 of the 50 seats. Seven of the 
eight major European defence corporations on the GoP are now 
represented on ESRAB (BAE Systems is the surprising exclusion). The 
first ESRAB Chairman was Markus Hellenthal of EADS, followed by Tim 
Robinson of Thales. The EU, which has only two seats, is represented 
by the European Defence Agency (EDA) and Europol. There are no seats 
for either the European Commission or the European Parliament, 
meaning that ESRAP is only thinly accountable to the EU and not at 
all accountable to the people of Europe.

The composition of ESRAB means that, in effect, the same arms 
corporations that stand to benefit the most from ESRP funding are 
responsible for shaping the strategic priorities - and free to do so 
in their interests, with precious little democratic accountability.

Preparatory Action for Security Research: paving the way to a militarised EU

The 'Preparatory Action for Security Research' (PASR) represents only 
a fraction of the funding that the full ESRP is to receive, but 
already offers an insight into the technologies of control currently 
under development. For example, it has already awarded funding for a 
high-level strategic planning project called SeNTRE, led by the 
European Association of Aerospace and Defence Industries (ASD) - the 
largest defence industry lobby group. This effectively outsources a 
key policymaking role to a private interest group. The PASR budget 
line is also funding ESSTRT (European Security: Threats Responses and 
Relevant Technologies), a strategic planning project that is being 
led by the defence giant Thales.

Over two of its three rounds (2004 and 2005), PASR has so far funded 
24 projects to the tune of €30 million euros. Military organisations 
and defence sector contractors are leading 17 out of the 24 projects. 
Many have received 'seed money', meaning that further, more 
substantial funding is likely in future. The 'big four' European arms 
companies represented on the GoP have done particularly well - Thales 
is participating in at least five projects, with Thales UK leading 
three of them; the EADS group is also leading three projects; at 
least seven Finmeccanica companies are participating in three 
projects, leading two of them; while BAE is participating in at least 
three projects. TNO, the Dutch military R&D institute, has also done 
very well, participating in four projects and leading one of them. It 
is almost certain that these organisations are participating in more 
of the PASR projects funded so far but at the time of writing only 
half of the contracts have been published. (See here and here)

The projects funded by the PASR cover five objectives, which include 
'situation awareness' (a euphemism for surveillance), protecting 
against terrorism, network security, crisis management, and IT 
'interoperability' (including the cross-border sharing of personal data).

Some of the projects funded under the ESRP so far have a legitimate, 
civil objective - dealing with radio-nuclear fallout and protecting 
critical infrastructure, for example. The majority, however, deal 
with surveillance and the development of military technologies of 
political control that offer little guarantee as far as 'security' is 
concerned.

10 of the first 24 projects funded by the EU concern surveillance of 
one kind or another, most of them using technologies that are in no 
way limited to counter-terrorism. For example, PROBANT, led by French 
aerospace and defence contractor Satimo, concerns the 'visualisation 
and tracking of people inside buildings' including 'arrays of 
sensors, modulated scattering, pulsed signal techniques, advanced 
data processing, biometric measurements'.

Two projects involve surveillance from space. These can be seen in 
tandem with the development of the EU's Galileo satellite system (the 
EU's first major 'public-private partnership' in which the major 
financers are EADS, Finmeccanica, Thales and others), Galileo's 
planned uses include the monitoring of all road travel by satellite - 
the basis for the 'road pricing scheme' proposed in the UK.

Another EU funded project will see Dassault Aviation, Europe's 
leading exporter of combat aircraft, funded to coordinate what is 
basically an EU feasibility study on the use of UAV's (Unmanned 
Aerial Vehicles) for 'peacetime security' (and more specifically 
'border surveillance'). Dassault in fact launched Europe's first 
'stealth UAV' in 2000.

According to a report to the US Congress in 2005 the UAV accident 
rate is 100 times higher than that of manned aircraft. It will be 
interesting to see what the Dassault-consortium recommends.

Projects concerning 'biometric' identification systems are also being 
funded, despite civil liberties and privacy concerns about the 
unregulated storage and circulation of personal data. ISCAPS, 
coordinated by fingerprint-identification company Sagem, will develop 
a system of biometric controls for restricted areas - the example 
given in the project brief is 'an amusement park'!

The EU Joint Research Centre is also promoting biometrics, stressing 
the expected 'commercial application' of their use following the 
introduction of biometric passports across the EU from 2007.

Arming Big Borther argues that the creation of a security-industrial 
complex in Europe must be seen in the context of EU security policies 
which have placed law enforcement demands ahead of civil liberties concerns.

Criticisms and concerns

There has been precious little debate about the development of these 
programmes but TNI and Statewatch have serious concerns.

No accountability in policy making

The European Commission has taken extraordinary steps to prepare a 
budget line outside the normal framework for EC research. It is 
particularly disturbing that the establishment of the GoP went almost 
unchallenged, with no meaningful discussion in the Council, no 
consultation in the European Parliament, and policy making all but 
delegated to the unaccountable Group of Personalities - on which the 
military-industrial lobby was heavily over-represented.

The expansion and formalisation of the GoP into the EU Security 
Research Advisory Board makes permanent this unprecedented polity, 
but still the idea that private companies, run for profit, should be 
accorded an official status in the EU goes unchallenged. The result 
is that the arms industry is shaping not just EU security research, 
but EU security policy. It must be hoped the European and national 
parliaments take seriously their obligation to challenge both the 
costs and the alleged benefits of security research and to review all 
military expenditure by the EU. The full security research programme 
is not yet underway and parliaments could still take meaningful 
action to restrict or at least bring the ESRP under some form of 
regulation or democratic control.

Costs and priorities

A proposed budget of one billion euros per year for security research 
is almost treble that being made available by the EU for research 
into the environment, including climate change, and the equivalent of 
10 per cent of the entire EU research budget. But it is not just a 
question of priorities. European arms companies already enjoy healthy 
subsidies and competitive advantages at the national level. The big 
four European arms companies have combined annual revenue of around 
84 billion dollars, not far off the total EU budget. Why should 
European citizens be footing the bill for their research?

Technological determinism

The European Commission has claimed that the EU must match US funding 
of security research to ensure the competitiveness of its industries 
in meeting global security threats. Whilst technology can undoubtedly 
assist in police investigations, there is no evidence to suggest that 
it prevents terrorism or crime because technology can do nothing to 
address the multifaceted 'root causes' of these social problems.

The threat to civil liberties and privacy

There is already clear evidence that new law enforcement technologies 
can have a damaging effect on civil liberties unless there are strict 
controls on their use and a clear regard for individual human rights. 
The rushed EU legislation on the introduction of biometrics into 
passports and travel documents raises serious privacy issues, not to 
mention concerns about the usefulness, reliability and accuracy of 
the underlying technology. It is now quite possible to envisage a 
Europe in which everybody is registered, fingerprinted and profiled; 
in which all communication and movement is monitored and recorded for 
law enforcement purposes; and in which we are increasingly policed by 
military force rather than civilian consent.

Conclusion

Arming Big Brother concludes with a call for civil society to resist 
the development of the security-industrial complex and the wider 
militarisation of the EU. Civil liberties groups and anti-militarist 
campaigners should challenge current developments and explain to the 
people of Europe what is being done in their name. It is hoped that 
this report contributes to a broader campaign against EU militarism 
and that it will be followed-up by systematic monitoring of the 
development and implementation of the ESRP by independent groups.

Full report: www.tni.org/reports/militarism/bigbrother.pdf

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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
     Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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