 members of C-Watch. C-Watch is a nonprofit initiative that's dedicated to the civilian rescue of refugees at sea. And they're going to be talking to us about a new tech that's going to be implemented, or that is implemented, at the European border and how that technology is being used not for good purposes, but rather being used against human rights. So please give a big round of applause to Niska and Nick. Yeah. Hello. Good evening. And thanks for coming. Yeah. Like I said, we're going to talk about Frontex, Oirozoo, and the European Border Surveillance System. I'm Nick. I worked with C-Watch since 2016. I help out with the IT there. And actually, I wanted to do the talk with Alina, who cannot be here today. So Niska was kind and helped out. Yeah. Hi. I'm Niska, and I've been working for C-Watch Airborne operations for about a year and a half. And I'll give some insight into what we experienced there with our aircraft day in and day out, flying next to Frontex airplanes. So we will start with a short video, which was partly the reason why I started preparing this talk. I found it surfing on YouTube. And it was given in 2015 during a developers conference of S3. S3 produces geonformation software for governments, for private companies, et cetera. And Pieter Malinowski, the head of Oirozoo, of the European Border Surveillance System, talked there to the developers to recruit them. And when I saw that, I thought, yeah, people have to see this. You will see now why. It's really important to say like we cut it to be. If you see European Union flag, you might think, my gosh. There is another bureaucrat today. He's going to talk about minimum size of bananas, which can be sold in EU. But we will be talking about more important things today than bananas. We will be talking about internal security. We'll be talking about challenges which we are facing today as Europe and how my agency, Frontex, helps member states of European Union to tackle those challenges and threats. So one of our primary political goal is to make sure that we can support member states with a state-of-the-art technology to limit the number of deaf bodies on the high seas, including kids like that. But there is also a dark side of border management. We are talking about those guys. They are trying more and more to hide in the groups of illegal migrants and reach European Union on the newest threat, Ebola virus. You will see later in my presentation that migrants trying to reach Europe on small boats, that's a perfect environment. If there is one person on boat infected with Ebola, entire boat can be infected. And you can imagine what can happen if that boat will land on $1 shores in Italy or Greece. So those are three main areas where Frontex is trying to support member states. We do not do that ourselves as agency. We provide capabilities to member states and member states can use those capabilities to do the proper job. And most of those capabilities are smart technology, smart assets, intelligence pictures, risk analysis, one of the biggest part of our job risk analysis. One of the main frame or legal framework that we are using currently to do our job, meaning to save human lives, to limit cross-border crime, and to track as much as possible all those terrorists trying to get into European Union. We use a new legal framework and technical framework called EUROSUR, which is a European Border Surveillance System. And this framework is and will be the main tool for Europe to improve situational awareness, to increase reaction capability, and the external borders for three main goals, save as many people as possible, find out all criminals and terrorists trying to reach European Union borders. And I said that it's safe in life. Yes, that's the most important one. So we decided a couple of years ago to invest in GIS capabilities. Today, we call it Frontex Core GIS. The main engine of Frontex Core GIS is based, of course, on your products. So we have diverse data sources. And to be honest, we are not limited in data sources. Basically, on daily basis, we are looking for new data sources from different providers. There is no limits there. I would say, sky is the limit. Our platform is ready to support all data formats or data sources that are available there. So it's just a matter of finding them. So that's our main platform. Of course, we have here a basic GIS capabilities. Like, we can decide which base map we want to use. I will not show you that because probably that's the basic stuff for you. But one of the requirements I set for us was to develop system that operator needs only finger, nothing else. So we decided to build in a couple of different frameworks, technological frameworks, to achieve that goal. So right now, what I will do, and usually what our users do with fingers on touch screens or tablets, they just can drop different data sets on the screen. So we have, for instance, a full picture about all commercial and phishing vessels right now on OpenSea. We are using diverse group of reporting systems, AIS, satellite AIS, LRAI-T, long-range identification and traffic, VMS for phishing vessels, even positioning of some pleasure boats. So everything that has transponder on it, we can see it here. And I will tell you in two minutes why it's so important for us and for our operators. Another thing what we try to do, we try to provide to our users detailed models of the weather on the sea. So basically, our officer can zoom in in the area where he is interested or she is interested. And you see right now today at 6 o'clock, the size of waves here in this area is two meters. But officer can play and see how the situation will change during the next hours. We also provide a simulation where the boat can end up. We take into account, we have models which are using currents, temperature, the sea, everything to predict where a certain size of the boat with certain engine capabilities can be. And keep in mind, I present to you today only a part related to situational awareness, situational picture, real to near time. That's, let's say, 40% of our job. 60% is risk analysis, where our colleagues from risk analysis unit are using extensively GIS platform, SGIS platform, to predict how the situation will change in the future, what are the new trends, and visualize that they try to do a visualization for decision making folks. Basically to let them see in easy to understand way how the situation will change. And it's all on the maps, on web maps, on portals. And I think that as a successful example how this GIS can support, first, that we can feel a little safer here, and secondly, that we can save some human beings. And I would like to thank you guys from Esri, most of you probably, because you can say yes, because of your job, you save those people. Those faces of those kids, probably, maybe not those, because I don't, fortunately, can present you the real pictures of kids we save because of some legal aspects. But you can say yes, you contributed to this process. So that's a big thank you from us, from our government, to you. Thank you. So, yeah, sorry that we showed such a long video, we already cut it as much as we could because we didn't want to show such a long blob. But yeah, we thought it's really interesting to show this mindset and to show how they sell what they are doing, which is, yeah, we can see that it's not the case, as they describe it there. So now we'll shortly talk about the second area, why Frontex is actually, yeah, why Frontex says it's needed. So, yeah, the short history, like in 1885, the European Union, or like countries within the European Union wanted to do this borderless area, which in 1995 actually became like the borderless area. And from there on, Frontex actually wasn't in there, it started in 2006 with the Schengen border code. And they're like, they organize that the countries are, we try to, they're basically organized, like those checks, how they are formalized, how strict they have to be, et cetera. And then also with that, Frontex was founded by then only called Frontex, now they just changed the name to European Border and Coast Guard Agency. What they basically do is they organize the border controls within the European Union or within the Schengen area for not only for its citizens, but also for third party citizens, and they're there to harmonize the border controls. That means like creating standards and yeah, yeah, harmonizing the border controls in a way that they're like within all the countries. And they facilitate the cooperation between the different national polices and give them tools, develop tools for them and train them in using them. What kind of tools I will go into later? And they do a risk analysis, which is then also part of our system. When we look at the budget of Frontex, we see a slight increase, especially in the next years, probably because of the situation in Europe right now. Yeah, like the idea is like not to help out actually where it's needed, but instead like build up this fortress Europe with yeah, quite a lot of money. Then in 2013, Frontex wasn't enough. They started building up the European Border Surveillance System, which is, they call it the technical framework, which is like a little bit undefined. And what's really important, the budget of that, which was like 300 million, is not equal to the Frontex budget. That means like it was like added even to this whole lot of money. It's there to generate like a situation picture within Europe, like this whole map thing you just saw. And what's also really relevant, also like a pre-frontier situation analysis, which means like they're not only looking at the direct borders, they also look into the pre-border areas. That means within Africa, the sub-Saharan Africa, our people start moving there and might there be a problem for Europe. They want to use drones, satellites, underwater drones, like on land drones, everything. They really watch too much James Wan movies. And what's really important, like they sell all of this other sort of thing, like they want to save human lives. You also just saw this dude talking about how important these children are to him. But when you look at what they're actually doing, it's like the exact opposite. It's all about building up the fortress Europe. So, and what's also really important, this saving human lives aspect was only added after like a lot of pressure of the opposition in the European Parliament. And after 300 people died in front of Lampedusa one week before all of this was established. So, and you see it again, like a quote from the European Commission after bringing it into program. Like it's all about saving human lives. And for sure a border cross traffic, but yeah, actually it's just saving lives. So, and here now we go through some of the slides that he just presented. So, here you can see, I hope, it's quite small. So, they see like how they, so they have like this weather data, they have this AIS data that means the ship's positions and the satellite pictures, et cetera. And they want to like push it into this combined service so that like everybody guard can just do it with a web service with one finger. Which is like slight problem when you think about like how much data is aggravated in there. And what decisions might be taken because of the data which is aggravated there. So, and there you see like how they wanted it. So, they have the Frontex vessels, they have the normal merchant vessels, they have the European military missions and all of that goes then together into this GIS system and in the Euro student network where the data can be accessed. What's really important for us, like this data is from 2014. So, they already started having their complete data sources about everything that's actually happening in the Mediterranean Sea. That means the AIS data, which is the position data of every commercial ship, which would be really, really interesting for us. Nika will tell you later why. But yeah, like it's just closed within like this black box Frontex. When he talks about satellite detection services, what's really important to know there. Especially when we think about like, do they see what's happening there? Do they see how people die? The radar satellites cannot provide like a 24-7 capability to monitor the Mediterranean Sea because they're not geostationary. That means like they're not above one point of the earth all the time. Instead, they move around all the time. That means they cannot have like a live picture of the Mediterranean Sea. Instead like this, the satellite is passing by every once in a while. And they can like see basically what the time frames are. So like, yeah, every day between like on a different time that they're able to see this area. So they don't have this 24-7 surveillance that which is why they wanna use drones. And especially like this autonomous drones, which can fly all the time in swamps, blah, blah, blah. I will come to that later. To have this like real time, all the time surveillance of an area, which if it works, we will see. But yeah, so and here you can see basically how they do the automated analysis. So they can see when you see a green triangle, it means that there's already a data point from the AS system. So from this official system where they send their location points. What they also see is that they're like a lot of tiny boats which don't send the signal. So they match this in every ship, which is like not matching the signal is something which might be suspicious. And especially like if then the ship goes straight north towards Lampedusa, et cetera, it might be something where they might could investigate. So which is really interesting when we look at the case that we'll not be able to talk about because if this is the case, if the stuff is working, they can see a lot of stuff which whether either should inform, yeah, the European authorities or at least the Libyan authorities. So what we can see there, so I'm not talking like the Libyan authorities in the case that those boats are sinking. And we don't know how much this is happening. And it's, but we know that the Libyan coast guard posted this picture. So which like, we never get this kind of information. We never get any information if they know about any boats and if they know about boats where they are. But the Libyan coast guard posted this picture on the Facebook site. And it's obviously a picture taken out of a surveillance airplane, a drone, or something like this showing them risking a boat. So there we have like the really big question like why do they have to start and we don't. So, and now Niska is going to talk about, yeah, like one case which is like really interesting in this context. Yeah, as Nick said, this information would be immensely important for our work as well. All we basically have is our aircraft and the ships that are out there of the NGOs. We have come to a point with European politics that we are not even informed about distress cases anymore by the Rescue Coordination Center. Even if we are the closest vessel in the area, for example, we are not informed because obviously we're not supposed to rescue these people to Europe. So with our aircraft, as we can fly most of the time even when the ships have been stuck in port because of European politics, we witnessed a lot of cases over this year where we know that Frontex and other European authorities knew about boats under stress and where they chose not to do anything or where they potentially informed the so-called Libyan Coast Guard and they did not rescue in the end. So that boats were left at sea up to several weeks. The most prominent case of this year was a boat, a small rubber boat that you see in the picture as well with 15 people on board. It started on the 1st of August in Zawiya in western Libya and it was at sea for 11 days before it was finally spotted and reported. These were 11 days of really, really good weather in which we know of several cases that had involvement of Frontex and involvement of other European aircraft and still this case was not reported. They pretend that they only knew of this case on this 11th day and on that day there was one survivor still on board and the other 14 had died. From what we witnessed over these days we can pretty much assume that they knew of this case before but chose not to rescue. This was another case, this was in June of this year. It was a boat of people who had called Alarm Phone, an organization that provides a number, a phone number to which people can make a call from satellite phones if they are on the move and from Alarm Phone we knew that this boat had been at sea for three days. By the time that our aircraft spotted this boat this was already the third day then and they had run out of fuel. They were already in the Maltese search and rescue area and the interesting part is that the armed forces of Malta were already informed and Frontex aircraft was on scene and what usually happens is that they try to avoid any kind of communication that we can overhear because obviously they don't want us to listen to that, to what they're doing and what they know. In this case however, the operator on the Frontex aircraft was not so cautious and said on the radio on an open channel that they had been monitoring them for hours. That was the quote. What happened then was that we informed obviously about this distress case and knew that armed forces Malta already knew about it. They were on scene, but they chose not to rescue. We came back to this case about six hours later after having patrolled the area furthermore and they had still not rescued these people and at that point we then basically had to threaten them that we were going to take them to court with the proof, with the video evidence and the audio recordings that we had which has become unfortunately one of our main tasks to record everything that we witnessed to then be able to threaten them but also potentially assist in court cases that might take these people in some future and bring that kind of behavior to justice only after this threat did they start to rescue. So this was the vessel of the Maltese just standing by instead of rescuing. And yeah, for hours they were left next to them. We have a lot of these cases. Unfortunately in many situations we don't have actual evidence because we can't be on scene with our aircraft forever. We have an endurance of like six hours so we can't be the 24-7 to collect all this evidence and the recordings that we would need to prove more of these cases but I think they're quite explicit and you get an idea of what's happening down there on a daily basis basically. Yeah, so what we talked about so far like with Eurostore are programs which are like already running at the moment or which they're like building up at the moment like to get it running like if it's running I actually have no idea. But what's really, really interesting when we look into the future is like programs which are like under the hood of Horizon 2020 and that's the European framework for research and innovation. That means like it's a program where they're like giving budget for scientific research in areas that are interesting somehow politically for the European Union. And yeah, it's 80 billion euros spent and this money is, or a lot of this money is spent also to private companies and especially companies like TALIS for example which are like also like involved in programs that I will talk about next. Yeah, so military companies that means like a lot of this scientific money is going into the development. Yeah, in military companies and also a lot of this stuff can be used. Yeah, military afterwards. The first thing I wanna talk about is I bought a control. What's it called? They're really awesome with the names. It's the idea about us or what is for us like third country nationals that means like, I don't know, people from the States or people from India or wherever wanna travel into the European Union. They have to go through a process where they have to like yeah, apply for the visa and then also like get into like how they get in. They're already like a risk analysis about how dangerous the person is and it has to start and this risk analysis will happen in a web browser with webcam. So the idea is that you have to talk with an avatar. That's what they call them. That's what they look like. So and this avatar will ask you questions and in this webcam your face gets recognized and your mimic gets analyzed and they say like if you're dangerous or if you're not dangerous. The intercept had the chance to test the system. I link the article in the sources. It's really worth reading. I think everybody who saw the talks about biometrical systems of Starbucks on this Congress knows how good those things are working and they're working like as good as those avatars look. So and what's then really interesting like what's actually happening like behind all the systems and they have a website. I bought a control.net I guess or you can Google it and they give some internals which is that. So and I mean you can get kind of an idea that you have the client side there and the portable unit that they have at the border checkpoints but what is actually happening like in the middle of it? No like yeah maybe like people can understand it then I would be really interested in what's happening there. What I'm like really interested is like this database part in the middle because like they start collecting data weirdly biometrical data obviously and we know what happens once an agency is collecting the stuff other agencies also wanna collect it. So like they're starting like building up all those databases and like nobody's actually taking really care about what's happening with the starter and like in privacy concerns like if it's legitimate to collect all the start of people who just want to travel into the European Union. For sure like when you think about like the first video that we show like yeah it's like all a flow of terrorists and yeah for sure saving human lives but yeah it's like the mindset that they have that they wanna collect all this data and what I think is really worth mentioning like project partners so like the University of Hannover is working also on the project so yeah and the next program Robota it's like they're like really good with those names. It's like a fully functional autonomous border system that means like they I have actually no clue what it means because like if you wanna have a full function autonomous border system but it sounds like kind of terminator for me like they talk about like drones in the air and the water on land and they wanna operate in swamps and they wanna do it intelligently and that's what they want to make like this picture of the Mediterranean Sea probably of where they have this like all the time life's away and switch they can document and play back as they want to which yeah we have to see if it will work but that's actually but that's at least what they plan they start testing that now with at least one like with multiple drones on cost and what's really interesting they use like a mobile operation center which is the Muros which maybe some of you will know it's like the standard police surveillance car in Berlin so it's like built by a German company and there they that will be like the situation center where all this data goes together which is like if you look at it technically is quite a hard task and if you see how they talk about it like I'm really curious if this actually work because like that's the actual really interesting question if they say or if they have the capabilities that they say they have they watch life what's happening there and they are able to see like life how people die there and if it's not the case they spend a lot of money on this cyber BS where I actually like have like no clue like who's actually controlling it because like they have like now this momentum where they say like yeah we're protecting the borders there are terrorists coming like this and like yeah the migrant crisis and the wife of migrants is coming give us money and it's just like thrown to them and that's like something we really really really have to talk about and what's happening with all the data they're collecting because like I said we know like once data is collected other people also want to have it so what should be done? First of all we have to stop forcing migrants to using this illegal routes this irregular routes because as long as they have to take those posts as long as there are like no legal ways to go into Europe we have those irregular ways that means people are forced to take those ways and that means like yeah we're enabling like to like in case that people want to get into Europe in an irregular way we're like enabling it within like generating those big flows by not enabling legal ways to enter Europe. Then also in front takes data needs to be more public we have to have access to that and researchers need to have access to that and journalists need to have access to that so that we can actually talk about what's happening there and that we know and that we can actually save human lives with that. What's also important the transparency in the decision process so when they make this risk analysis those risk analysis have like immense impact on human lives in the end. So we have no idea how they are made we have no ideas like what data they take and what data they don't take to make those risk analysis and front takes is trying to have like a console where also like NGOs can like work together with them and watch over that, see what's just applied for that and see what was declined to work with them. So and what's really important same privacy standards for everyone. So and that's it for today. So thanks guys for a super interesting and important talk. We have some time for questions. So if you have any questions from the crowd please line up next to one of the three microphones in the aisle, questions from the internet if we have will take from the signal angel. Yes, any questions? If there's no question from the crowd then I'll start by asking a question. The data that you guys are mentioning that should be open is that anything that might fall under GDPR in some way that maybe can assist in making that data more accessible or confronting somehow hide behind being like some sort of government body that maybe shouldn't or doesn't have to open that data out. So far we didn't try to get for example like the AIS data from BIA, right like those. GDPR requests. The thing is like it's commercial data. So the means list they most likely get it from commercial service. So the question is like they have maybe like this copyright thing again what just happened is fact and start to suit protects for position data of their vessels which would be at least like also really interesting for us like how close they are to possible points because we estimate or we guess that they're actually like quite closer to maybe you can also like talk about that they're like actually like they're way closer to points than they actually say so and they're also like the concept and all they don't have to. So, let's see. Look for number two. Yeah, sort of a follow up to this like is there enough public information or almost public information like ADSB from the aircraft and AIS from the ships to watch what Frontex is doing and have that guide your search missions as well because they might be on top of what's happening and standing by doing nothing and it might be the interesting spots for you to find out although I don't know, do they turn off their AIS and their ADSB transponders to hide where they are or? Yeah, they do. That's the short answer. Yeah, I mean, it's a bit of a weird situation. We fly from Lampedusa and Frontex flies from there as well. So we often stand next to our aircraft in the morning and we land afterwards and yeah. And then they talk to us and in some of these conversations they've even admitted to doing that. And the only way of us, I mean, sometimes you get some data from them. Sometimes they don't switch it off. Sometimes you can also see military assets from Operation Sofia that are down there but most of the times it's switched off and sometimes they appear in the area list but we don't get actual tracks. And yeah, for the ships it's basically the same and apart from that the European Union has withdrawn all their ships because with ships they have to save lives. That doesn't fit with what they really wanna do so they have chosen to only operate aircraft at the moment so that they can then give all this data that they collect to the so-called Libyan Coast Guard and they operate the ships that are obviously donated by the EU and then the Libyans, fortunately, have not signed the Geneva Convention that would prevent them from bringing people back to Libya which obviously the EU countries have so it's working out quite well for the EU to only have aircraft that gather all this data and then give it to the Libyans so they can bring the people back to hell. And we don't have any insight really into it apart from being there and seeing them do this. Like for number one. Thanks a lot for a very interesting talk. I was just thinking and wondering, this surveillance system, if or when it's implemented, could that actually backfire? Because as far as I know it's highly illegal to ignore made calls to not help for any vessel that's within range. So if there's like a 24-7 monitoring of the entire Mediterranean Sea, every time a vessel sinks, this is being watched somehow automatically or manually and so every time there's a case for taking people to court. Yeah, we think that's actually happening already at the moment, that they have in their archives quite some stuff which might be quite problematic for them and if it finds the way somehow to the public we would be like super happy about that. But yeah, like it could absolutely backfire and that's also why we really want like transparency in this data and want this data to be shared publicly because it could also be used as a control for them to monitor them. I mean, it's like this whole privacy debate. Like I think it's still quite a creepy system but yeah, for gathering evidence on what they do it might be super interesting. Any more questions from the internet? Has a question, yes. Yes, the internet asks when human rights violations are being monitored or proofed, aren't there any procedures of EU law enforcement to take consequences on that crime scene case of watching but not supporting? It's a bit tricky. So for us as civilians, we can't take the states if they're in this case breaking the law or the Libyans to court. We don't have that right, states could do that. Obviously they don't have any interest in doing so. It depends a bit. So usually the only people that could actually sue are the people that are affected. So the people on the boats or if people have died then their relatives could also sue them but most of the times these people are not actually anywhere in Europe for example where they have access to a whole judicial system. So that's the one problem with some cases with state actors involved, prosecutors in the respective state could sue them. And this is mainly interesting in the case of Italy because Italy has marine ships down there from the Navy and there are still some forces in Italy I'd say who are investigating into this direction and who we're also in touch with and giving our data. So that potentially, at least with Italian Navy, there could be some effect. But for now all we can do is either publicize this and make it Europe-wide known that this is happening so that potentially something develops out of that but we can't take them to court ourselves. So one last question for microphone number two. Maybe also one addition to that was also really important when you look at those systems that's really hard sometimes to get a responsibility like one responsible person in this whole. For example when you take a risk analysis which might lead to more intense border controls which make it more impossible for people to get into country A or B. This is like a really abstract process where like a lot of people take decisions which lead up into this decision which make it impossible for people to enter Europe. But yeah you don't have like this one person which is responsible for that which also those really complex systems enable. So last question for microphone number two please make it short. So thanks for the talk and for the great work you're doing. Pivoting off the question about AIS and other using their data to profile them are you looking at things like within the realms of the legal of course looking at their drone down links metadata that they're leaking through sites that they're using and things like that to sort of get a sense of what they're seeing or what data they're leaking that they're not aware of. Not so far except for radio calls that we office or like the other people definitely here but we are like highly interested in everybody who can help us in doing that. So unfortunately that's all the time we have for questions. I want to again thank you very much for the work you're doing. It's amazing and thanks for the great talk.