The EU’s police agency, Europol, will be forced to delete much of a vast store of personal data that it has been found to have amassed unlawfully by the bloc’s data protection watchdog. The unprecedented finding from the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) targets what privacy experts are calling a “big data ark” containing billions of points of information. Sensitive data in the ark has been drawn from crime reports, hacked from encrypted phone services and sampled from asylum seekers never involved in any crime.
Sometimes we need to be reminded that authorities illegally amassing huge troves of data on unsuspecting and innocent people is not something that only happens in the US. But it is also worth noticing how in EU we at least have institutions that are trying curb these blind mass surveillance tendencies. If that fight will have measurable effects in the long run is something that we can’t foresee.
So what happens with regards to fines now. The EU’s own GDPR law say they can issue fines of up to “€10 million, or 2% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue”.
Are we going to see Europol hit with any kind of action other than just a slap on the wrist and told to delete it?
If anyone else decided it wanted to not only store, but to set out to gather personal data illegally, there would be a lot of fines being handed out by the EU.
I wondered when someone was going to pick up on this news. European lawyers and others with positions on governance are all over this like a rash. I’m actually quite disappointed Europol’s head, Catherine de Bolle, has pushed the arguments she has. It’s the kind of feature creep and desire for more powers nonsense you expect from the US’s FBI. I’m really not sure her position is tenable when weighed against the EU commissions stance on data privacy and abuse of safe harbour. The EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, puts her to shame.
The Guardian isn’t always the best source of news. They can be questionable on equality and human rights, and their reputation on security issues is much more overblown than they deserve. A large part of the Guardian’s reporting on this has been lifted from other sources. I know because I read them first!
Yeah, The Guardian have tried to keep the same prominance with major scoops, plus expand into America in a big way, not to mention older expenses like their glass Versailles behind Kings Cross and the ruinously expensive custom format printing presses. All with declining paper sales and minimal online revenue. What goes? Journalists go.
Out of interest, what specific topics do you regard them to be questionable on within equality and human rights?
@M.Onty
Apparently, the Guardian “don’t do” investigative journalism. Most media don’t nowadays because the money has gone out of mass media courtesy of Facebook et al. They also have a reputation for paying none staff contributors a very low rate apparently because they believe the prestige of being published by the Guardian is payment enough. The Guardian coverage of the Snowden affair only happened by accident and they have milked this ever since but I find their coverage of security and international affairs and mechanics of democracy to be pretty lightweight. The Atlantic or Der Spiegel, they are not.
Alan Rusbridger got the side eye off me when he had Cameron on the ropes and let him off the hook at Davos. (I have a wicked habit for mixing metaphors). An election which may have been lost by the Tories instead ushered in a neo-Thatcherite austerity programme with everything else which followed including a huge rise in hate crimes, Brexit, and the most corrupt government in the history of the UK. The current editor, Katherine Viner, has never worked as a journalist and seems to have spent her life in jobs telling other people what to do and nosing around and micromanaging. Not impressed.
Guardian coverage on equality and human rights issues has never been the same since Deborah Orr died. A few of their journalists have too close a relationship with right wing media or far right aligned groups of the turn every woman into a tradhousewife variety. Their coverage of disability issues is weak. (Disability News Service is THE place to get news from.) On LGBT issues the Guardian is so bad Stonewall pretty much refuse to talk to them. Their analysis of public policy and guidance and practice let alone the latest science and forensics with respect to women’s rights and development is near zero. It’s also woefully poor on ageism and, actually, discrimination effecting men too especially within healthcare contexts. Social services failings… Local council failings. Their discussion of the legal environment in a way which provokes both understanding and discussion is effectively zero. The Guardian is also very shy with handing out citations so people can review primary sources themselves and is rather uneven on linking directly to court transcripts. They rarely comment on or link to official reports highlighting problems with UK governance on equality and human rights issues to the point where you would think they are softballing this particularly bad and nasty UK government.
Comprehensive! Thanks for responding in depth. How to do journalism without paying for it is indeed an issue for self-regarding papers. No wonder they all tend to run ‘campaigns’ (“Govt, fix our broken X!” [six months later] “We got them to fix our broken X!”)
Just for whimsy, picking up on a passing remark, I reckon Pitt the Younger could still teach the current lot a thing or two about corruption.
@M.Onty
Thanks. It was just a comment. As for funding I don’t know. UK media regulation is very weak including weak enforcement of fitness to own a newspaper, as is competition regulation. US based social media and watch on demand has pretty much sucked the life out of the advertising industry. Online is also a different experience to printmaking the days of glossy well produced iconic adverts a thing of the past. As for campaigns? I noticed those! They’re really getting on my wick.
Pitt the Younger? omg. He makes this lot look tame! Empire builder, suppressing progression, wars in Europe. That’s Tories for you!
Of course the real question is: will they delete it? I’m not being sarcastic. Will they really delete that data, or will they do what a lot of organizations have done and retain it somewhere else yet make it appear as though it has been deleted?
Come on, you’re not actually asking that in seriousness are you? Humanity will be deleted long before anyone’s personal data.
They can always delete the main data, but “outsource” this to a non-EU jurisdiction. Interpol would be a great candidate.
Something like the US and UK agencies which are not allowed spy on own citizens, but have cross-databases and help each other out.
Normally, any conviction based on this data should be thrown out. And here in US, there was even a case where an obvious terrorist was set free. However this only happens if the judge can know is a “fruit of the poisonous tree”.
sukru,
That’s the problem. Something can be unconstitutional, but the since the government won’t provide the data that proves its guilt, enforcing the law against the government ends up being a catch-22. Snowden’s leaks proved guilt but you’d need these leaks to happen on a recurring bases to really audit compliance. Any large scale operation is going to have thousands of government employees and contractors with clearance in the know, but alas they’d have to be willing to give up their freedoms to be a whistle blower. They will be prosecuted as a traitor for exposing government crimes.
Alfman,
One of my favorite police films was “Hot Fuzz”. (Don’t want to spoil it here much). There was a real focus on the paperwork. And the leading cop was very meticulous about writing everything down.
And the police actually do this in real life. They write reports. Unfortunately they know how to write reports that fit their own narrative.
There is even a term for it: “Parallel construction”
https://www.nacdl.org/Media/Parallel-Construction-Discover-Govt-Evidenc-Source
Say you get an illegal tip about a crime. Then a patrol car “happens to be” in that area. And then the cop “happens to hear a noise”, which leads them to knock on the door, “happening to smell a strange odor”, etc. … every step of this “chance encounter” is documented very well. Unfortunately all of that would be bogus.
As you said it is the public’s word against the government, and is usually very hard to prove.
sukru,
It looks like an interesting film.
At least now days nearly everyone has a camera which helps to catch deceptive narratives in public. On the other hand this is of limited use when the activities take place behind the scenes, out of public view.
I skimmed through the video quickly, maybe I’ll try to watch it in full some time. They mention the DEA. Drugs are very often used for pretextual stops of innocent people even when no crime is suspected. All too often now we’re seeing videos of police harassing the public and never facing responsibility over their actions because the laws and courts allow it.
The risk that innocent people face in police encounters bugs me a lot. Being innocent does not ensure your safety or liberty from abusive tactics. Even drug detecting dogs can be trained to take cues from the handler because they can be rewarded with treats for alerting, whether or not drugs are present. The dogs have become a powerful tool for corrupt police to obtain probable cause that won’t be questioned in court.
https://reason.com/2021/05/13/the-police-dog-who-cried-drugs-at-every-traffic-stop/
Oh how I wish everyone could just play nice and be reasonable. But it seems some people just have a mean streak and humanity ends up suffering because of it 🙁
Alfman,
Yes, the narcotic dogs alerting on cue is a known tactic. And unfortunately the public does not know about the concept of false positives.
If someone has their Twitch channel blocked due to a algorithm misfiring, we hear it all over the social media. People understandably are unhappy for that streamers loss of revenues until it is fixed.
However if a police dog misleads to an otherwise unlawful search, and someone’s actual money is seized, it rarely makes news. Or at least does not gather similar attention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States
As a thought exercise, we can make an “alternative” Yahoo! News (not the actual product of course), changing subjects in titles with random, alternative or opposite entities.
Instead of: Europol ordered to delete vast store of personal data,
Use: Facebook ordered to delete vast store of personal data
Instead of: Apple Fights Court Order to Unlock San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone
Use: Justice Department Fights Court Order to Hand Over Apple Leakers’ Personal Records
and measure the public reception.
(Again, I will not actually do this in real life, for many practical reasons).