EU Law Enforcement Preps To Start Sharing Sensitive Data With A Number Of Human Rights Abusers

from the gotta-destroy-lives-to-save-lives-I-guess dept

The EU Commission made a lot of noise about protecting the data of European citizens, resulting in the passage of a law that's almost impossible to avoid breaking. I guess those protections won't be extended to anyone a number of governments consider to be threats to national security. Even worse, this data will be shared with governments known for executing their critics. (h/t War On Privacy)

European Union officials have begun talks with counterparts in several Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt and Turkey, about proposed data-sharing deals that would allow Europol to exchange personal information about suspects with local law enforcement authorities.

In some circumstances, the deals could allow the transfer of data concerning a person’s race and ethnic origin, their political opinions and religious beliefs, trade-union memberships, genetic data and data concerning their health and sex life.

The deals are being sought by the EU as part of efforts to bolster counter-terrorism policing across the continent despite concerns being raised about the human rights records of the countries by the bloc’s own data protection watchdog.

When someone starts talking about terrorism and national security, all rational thought goes out the window. The EU will share data with Egypt, which recently made the news for executing nine people who claimed their "confessions" were tortured out of them.

Turkey isn't much of an improvement, seeing how its government also likes to jail critics -- going so far as to use other countries' laws against foreigners to punish non-Turkish citizens for insulting the president.

It's hard to see how all of the data being shared is relevant to multi-national terrorism investigations. In fact, much of what would be shared seems more like blackmail material than evidence tying people to terrorist groups or acts. Why else would the EU include data about targets' sex lives?

In normal countries under normal circumstances, data about political and religious affiliations would be off limits, as would medical information and trade union memberships. This isn't a case of creeping totalitarianism. This is full-blown enabling of existing totalitarian states, weaponizing the massive amount of data European law enforcement agencies collect on investigation targets.

The EU Commission claims this set of very personal data will only be disclosed if Europol believes it should be. Not very reassuring.

“The transfer of personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, genetic data and data concerning a person's health and sex life by Europol shall be prohibited, unless it is strictly necessary and proportionate in individual cases for preventing or combating criminal offences as referred to in the Agreement and subject to appropriate safeguards,” the directives say.

The same EU government that condemned Egypt's ongoing human rights abuses has no problem giving it data ammo to use against critics, dissidents, and activists. It seems like the claims about "appropriate safeguards" will be ignored if Europol feels the data it could obtain from other countries necessitates increased quid pro quo. Whatever oversight Europol has is probably no better than any other massive law enforcement/counter-terrorist agency, which usually ranges from slim to none.

Human rights abuses aren't going to stop as long as major nation-states continue to treat abusive governments as equals on the national security playing field. Just as certainly as Turkey has weaponized US-based social media moderation tools to silence critics, other governments seeking to permanently silence critics will weaponize this proposed data sharing to achieve the same ends. The world won't be any safer, but it might be just a bit more silent.

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Filed Under: data sharing, egypt, eu, law enforcement, personal information, privacy, turkey