20. October 2020

Palantir is not our friend

Why the EU must kick its addiction to US technology.

by Sophie in ‘t VeldMEP for D66, European Parliament

Sophie in 't Veld has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2004. Currently, she is a member of the Renew Europe Group and serves as the parliamentary leader of the delegation of the social-liberal Dutch political party Democrats 66 (D66) in the European Parliament. In 't Veld studied history at Leiden University. Before running for European Parliament, she has worked as an assistant to Dutch MEP Johanna Boogerd-Quaak and as Secretary of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR) in the Committee of the Regions. The ELDR is the precursor of the current ALDE Party. Sophie in 't Veld has built a profile around a number of priorities: privacy, fundamental rights, rule of law, migration and asylum, and pensions. These priorities guide her thinking as a member of two European Parliament Committees: • Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) • Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee (ENVI) Furthermore, in 't Veld chairs the LIBE committee’s Rule of Law Monitoring group and serves as vice president of the LGBTI Intergroup in the European Parliament.

15. October 2020

Wanted: better safeguards for intelligence in an interconnected world

Everyone’s a foreigner somewhere.

by Charlotte DietrichProject Manager, Stiftung Neue Verantwortung

Charlotte Dietrich is a project manager at Stiftung Neue Verantwortung for Digital Rights, Surveillance and Democracy. She manages the European Intelligence Oversight Network where she works on strengthening democratic oversight of intelligence services and connecting oversight agencies from all over Europe. Charlotte has a background in Political Sciences and National Security Studies. She studied at Sciences Po Paris and the Saint Petersburg State University for her undergraduate studies and holds a Master’s degree from King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. In her Master’s dissertation she focused on digital authoritarianism in Kazakhstan. She has gained work experience at the German Embassy in Kazakhstan, at a political foundation in Moscow and at the German Development Bank KfW in Tajikistan. Before joining SNV, she has worked as a Researcher focused on security and defence issues at M&C Saatchi, a strategic communications firm in London, and for the Falling Walls Foundation in Berlin.

27. July 2020

A strange war

How France abandoned its secular foundation to build an…

by Francois ThuillierAssociate Researcher, Centre for Conflict Studies (Paris)

François Thuillier has held numerous positions within the French security services, both operationally and in terms of foresight. He is now an associate researcher at the Centre d'étude sur les conflits, liberté et sécurité (CELS - Paris) and author of "L'Europe du secret - mythes et réalité du renseignement politique interne" (Paris - La Documentation Française - 2000), "La révolution antiterroriste" (Paris - Temps Présent - 2019 - preface by Marc Sageman), as well as the upcoming "Homo Terrorismus" (Temps Présent - 2020).

23. July 2020

Spain’s digital future rests on learning from past errors

The Spanish government’s new Digital Agenda should think of…

by Jesús CorderoData Protection Officer, Leegaltech

Jesús Cordero is a lawyer at Leegaltech, specialist in Digital Rights and Corporate Compliance, certified Data Protection Officer (DPO) according to the the Spanish Data Protection Agency Framework, and professor at the Industrial Organization School of the Ministry of Industry in Spain, with his MBA by the European University of Madrid. He is also creator of the national federation of youth United Nations associations, UNSA Spain, awarded with the “Here for Good” prize from Laureate Universities and co-sponsor of the international solidarity artistic initiative “Connecting Cultures”, a travelling exhibition on social inequities faced by children and how art can be a means to combat them. He has led several civic participation initiatives in Spain, the latest of which are communication campaigns to foster literacy on the public consultation on the draft for a Spanish Startup Law (2019) and on the European Commission's public consultation on the EU Data Strategy.

6. July 2020

Can MI5 agents get away with murder?

The Security Service’s secret policy on participating in…

by Sam Johnston HawkeLegal and Policy Officer, Reprieve

Sam works on policy and advocacy across all areas of Reprieve’s work, including accountability for UK intelligence involvement in rights abuses as well as the oversight of security and justice assistance overseas. He is also a non-practicing barrister, and prior to joining Reprieve, he was an Advocacy Officer at Liberty.

2. July 2020

France’s second try at the Intelligence Act

What the French Parliament needs to discuss in its upcoming…

by Floran VadilloAssociate Researcher, University of Bordeaux

Floran Vadillo, PhD in political science, associate researcher at the IRM (University of Bordeaux) and teacher at Sciences Po. Floran was security advisor to the President of the National Assembly's Laws Committee and, in this capacity, played a major role in the drafting of the 2015 Intelligence Act in France. He then served as advisor to the Minister of Justice and, since 2017, has been working for a major French digital company.

29. June 2020

Greece: Technology-led policing awakens

Hellenic police and border authorities are bulking up on…

by Eleftherios ChelioudakisCo-Founder, Homo Digitalis

Eleftherios is a co-founder of the Greek civil society organisation "Homo Digitalis", which is a member of the European Digital Rights (EDRi) network. He is a lawyer admitted to practice in Greece, while also he works as a research associate at the Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP) of KU Leuven. Eleftherios holds a LLB from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, a LLM on Law and Technology from Tilburg University Law School and a MSc in Digital Humanities from the Computer Science School of KU Leuven. Finally, he holds a Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP) designation from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

3. June 2020

Covid-19 tracking apps, or: how to deal with a pandemic most unsuccessfully

Are tracking apps really the solution or do they just add…

by Didier BigoSciences Po Paris

Didier Bigo is professor of International Political Sociology at Sciences Po Paris-CERI, France. He is part time professor at King’s College London, department of War Studies. He is additionally director of the Centre for study of Conflicts, Liberty and Security (CCLS) and editor of the quarterly journal “Cultures & Conflits” published by L'Harmattan. He is one of the co-editors of the new PARISS (Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences) journal, Brill, 2019, as well as founder and previous co-editor with Rob Walker of the ISA (International Political Sociology) journal.

22. May 2020

Try harder, Bundestag! Germany has to rewrite its foreign intelligence reform

What the German Constitutional Court’s decision on the BND…

by Thorsten WetzlingEditor-in-Chief, about:intel

Thorsten heads Stiftung Neue Verantwortung's research on surveillance and democratic governance. He created the European Intelligence Oversight Network (EION) and is a Principal Investigator in the new collaborative research project GUARDINT, designed to address and to redress the gap between increasingly transnational surveillance practices and still largely national accountability mechanisms. Thorsten gave testimony before the European Parliament and the Bundestag on intelligence legislation, and his work appeared in various media outlets. He is a member of the advisory board on Europe/Transatlantic of the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin and the scientific committee of the Cyber and Data Security Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Thorsten holds a doctorate degree in political science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. In the past, Thorsten worked as Senior Fellow at the Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security, The Hague Institute for Global Justice, and as Advisor for the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF). As Transatlantic Post-Doc Fellow for International Relations and Security (TAPIR), Thorsten studied national surveillance policies at the French Institute for International Relations (ifri) in Paris and the RAND Corporation and the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

27. April 2020

The Polish surveillance regime before the ECHR

After ignoring the Constitutional Tribunal’s call for…

by Barbara Grabowska-MorozPostdoc Researcher, University of Groningen & Former Project Coordinator, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Poland)

Former project coordinator at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Warsaw, Poland), where she conducted monitoring of the legislative process dealing with i.a. access to justice, surveillance law, criminal defense rights. Together with activists from Panoptykon Foundation, submitted an application to the European Court of Human Rights regarding lack of effective protection against illegal surveillance in the light of the Polish legislation.