 at 13 30 the title of the talk is frontex the european secret service this talk has been translated by duck man and flow so think about smart home all those surveillance technologies that you have in your home nothing what if we had a smart EU with all those cameras up in the air blimp satellites and so on what can happen with this is what Matias is going to tell you now applause please a lot of people think if they hear frontex but a big room that is very full and it's very full and the more people that come in the more have to be sent back that doesn't work that way because if someone is standing at the border you cannot really send them back because they might have used a transit country they they might not be a possibility to send them back and what you see here is the current migratory map from the from frontex from the website and what I'll focus on on this talk is the the region the central Mediterranean and especially operation theme is of frontex it's a new mission that replaces an old Italian replaces an old frontex mission and replaces an old Italian mission marinostra the European Union wasn't a great fan of that forcing Italy to replace that mission with currently operation theme is that isn't really a sea rescue mission but is a mission of surveillance stretching from from Malta about 2,000 kilometers it's not just in the Mediterranean just the not the whole Mediterranean but just one small stretch of coast it's not part of it also stretches in parts of Spain and elsewhere but this talk focuses on frontex and that's why I want to explain what else frontex does because I called it the the border secret service frontex defines a pre-border area for which it's responsible and that the area stretches into the far into Africa so they they created the reports for Mali in the extreme so generally they focus on the terrain but also on the north African coasts and Libya frontex has what they call a multi-purpose flight surveillance service operating sin with drones since October of this year I think you you should see the drone in this picture this drone carries a logo of frontex it's an Israeli product that that also flies in Afghanistan and here it's used for frontex typically used by the military in the case of frontex they fly without armament and are used to to surveil the Mediterranean after a long series of pilot projects with smaller and bigger drones and now with with this drone in production they also have different projects using balloons and aerostatic elements flying lighter than air vehicles and have been doing that for a long time they did the same thing with the drones after a long series of pilot projects they now went into production and they not only generate this surveillance data but they always also stream it to their to central processing facility and frontex is also occupied with improving the processing of this intelligence in collaboration with other agencies like the EMSA and the EFCA who also use drones and these agencies now share imagery they create with the drones so in general frontex has a very good picture of what's happening in the Mediterranean and uses that to to generate a picture of the the situation they are their participation in in military operations in improving the processing and combination of such imagery attempting to create a an extremely high resolution picture of the region created from satellite and aerial imagery to be able to post hoc identify movement in the region frontex also uses EuroSUR which is a system combining the surveillance capacities of several states each state already surveys their own borders on land and on sea and what frontex does with EuroSUR is pull together all of that data from several states and and frontex becomes the the situation center to combine all of that data from various states your sir is also undergoing in an upgrade so every year more and more money flows into these central sites especially for surveillance technology but a lot more important than that is the system called Copernicus which is a part of EuroSUR one could say but more generally speaking Copernicus is the the European satellite program that covers multiple areas starting with climate change melting polar caps agriculture how many fields were trampled in agriculture for 4G8 but the same imagery is also used to to surveil borders that that's the the central aspect of it the the satellites I believe are not all in operation currently it's supposed to be a constellation of six sentinels but as soon as the the first series of satellites is going to be completed Copernicus is already working on a second generation with high resolution what you see here is a map of refugee camps in Morocco attempted to create with a couple satellites the only place I was able to find this in the internet is a presentation of the EU satellite program the program that is responsible to manage and distribute the imagery created with these European satellites the person who who held the talk which was then published by Netspolitik and asked to have that image deleted from our Netspolitik post which we did not do he said yes of course this technology is also used for border surveillance for the example the Spanish enclave in Morocco which is an important aspect of a front-text of course also this system is being continuously improved ship tracking is especially easy for big vessels from space if ships try to evade detection they they unregister but from there they're invisible to transponders and to radar but from space it's pretty easy to spot these ships even if even if they are scheduled for decommissioning or anything and front-text can track the status of these ships from space and I would claim that the the big freighters that existed a couple years ago with people from from Turkey that moved to Europe that were a relatively safe way to to ship to the safe refugees from Turkey and bring them to Europe they were called ghost ships here maybe you remember up until a couple weeks there were three big ships and that suddenly stopped and I claim that this is because it's now possible to surveil these ships from space and track where they're moving front-text is also the first customer of what's called the space information superhighway this graphic shows it they shot up three laser-based comms satellites and the problem with satellites is that you need line of sight to a ground station to be able to send down data so with that you lose a lot of time if you have a comms network up in orbit you can connect to your satellites wherever they are via the network and downlink data in near real time the first and second satellites of the trio have been launched and front-text uses them for the Copernicus system so to get reconnaissance data without delay and work with it another thing you have is geowind and second and you know from that is an external military mission of the European Union that is also staffed by the Bundeswehr and they're active in the Mediterranean with all sorts of planes and ships and you can imagine what sort of reconnaissance capabilities these military ships planes and helicopters have including signals intelligence so listening into certain regions and they use it to combat human trafficking the question is how do you do it the Italians and Greeks usually send out some you votes to find human traffickers and the success in quotes of those missions is that they captured about 150 people who they say traffic humans I say in most cases these were just the guys operating the engine when the boat happened to be caught but they say that makes them responsible but well yeah the information from this system is of course distributed and front-text gets a copy where they try to use the data to analyze networks and they founded an organization names criminal information cell to make it more legal to transfer military data to civilian operators the European Defense Agency has its own projects so Marisa it's running for nine or ten years I think it's not a research project but more an operational one where some ministries of defense the interior and such are doing research and exercise together to improve the surveillance of the seas they try to have as much shielding layers as possible you can't see it quite here but there are various data layers and the amount of information in total is used to differentiate between suspicious and non-suspicious ships so a ship is on a defined route between ports doesn't start at some beach somewhere and this is done by a software what the European Defense Agency also does is a research program named Ocean 2020 where drones drones swarms cooperating with the maritime assets are used to gather data for military purposes and here the system is used to get border relevant data tests for this will soon happen it's you should keep your eyes open it looks like it will happen on the coast of Sweden there and there's a Europol HQ they send her against the smuggle of migrants that is Europe which is the police as opposed to border guards of the EU and they fling information back and forth three years ago they introduced a mechanism for combating terrorism where certain contents online are removed without actually being illegal in about 90% of cases it's mostly Facebook or YouTube posts or user accounts and they removed around the 1,000 instances of content that's about how to help people escape across the border Europe called this human trafficking criminality but well people who want to cross a sea to Europe might look at a Facebook group to get advice and if you remove this advice these groups or postings and people won't know how to do it they will look for or get more expensive traffickers or not use the right equipment over the past couple of years the budget for Frontex was increased every year but I have a comparison is three years ago the the price was about three million or so three billion or so net the budget was increased by about 600 million every year with the goal of approximately 11 billion with a dynamic budget every year so 11 billion for the years 2021 to 27 several other funds of the European Union also have a multi-year finance volume of 22 billion or so in all in the EU is going to spend 22 billion for border protection until 2022 and all in one could calculate how much people one could save with all of that money now what to do with all of that information there people might be interested in that if if one starts surveilling the Mediterranean's to such detail that no one should drone and yet people drone that could be interesting data and in a new discussion article 71 I believe the cooperation with third parties that article covers the the cooperation with third parties that should now be started so other countries shall now be connected to the system which is not that simple because it's only possible to work with governments or one should only work together with with governance that kind of sort of follow the the spirit of the human rights convention but if if the EU starts cooperating with states that that don't care for human rights that be kind kind of a problem and there's a lot of work of creativity being invested in that area and among other things the idea is to start incorporating regional networks there are already regional networks for example for for the Mediterranean one called seahorse it's not as cute as it sounds all the states bordering to the Mediterranean and Portugal combine data in that network and the idea is now to start connecting third-party states like Libya Tunisia Egypt and Tunisia to that system so it's a multilateral system it's not a network of the European Union but of some member states of the EU and others and that system the idea is now to connect that system to euros are no no easy in this image on the bottom is third state border networks which shall also be connected to that system in focus of course you have Libya because most people start from Libya because there's a lot of connections a lot of refugees coming from from Libya and Italy and there is already an important control center in Italy with staff from Libya that is supposed to cover the Mediterranean that probably already receives information from Italy now interestingly first up this information isn't coming from the European Union it's coming from one of the member states now Italy can work together with Libya quite closely without even having a an EU level contract because it's a it's a contract between Italy and Libya Italy also runs a sea rescue station for Libya and that is financed by the EU with 44 million euro to surveil the Mediterranean and to try and run as many high seas rescue operations as possible so in only on only in international waters and not in Libyan waters that you can see here on the map by the way also on the map you see who is responsible for the rescue operations in international waters interestingly Malta has a very big area of it needs to cover and that's also the reason why they work together closely with other states to to span that area now there is no coordination for for the sea rescue no international coordination yet and they now have an immediate temporary station to cover that which is surprisingly similar to the the euro CERN notes existing in in several member states and in practice that means that Libya is now connected to this seahorse system in the Mediterranean so Libya is not the first third-party country connected to that system the the German government even confirmed that this is slated to happen still within this month oh by the way this sea rescue zone for for private sea rescue organizations these are relatively impossible to reach so far it has been impossible to to connect that to the the Libyan state domain a lot of work in Libya happens with militias because the government doesn't really control the whole of the country but only subsets of it so Libya the first sub first third party that's getting connected to be followed by Egypt and Tunisia and now and the idea is for for this collaboration that just to to work in a bilateral fashion between Italy and Libya but also between the European Union and third-party states but that's not that simple because the regulations have to be changed but from my point of view there would also have to be a state contract with Libya between Libyan Frontex and that's also the reason why I'm here because this is now being discussed there is a draft resolution for it and in the end there will be a vote but we can still influence it all right so all of these phenomena I now describe the Mediterranean is being surveilled where do we where does the data go we're giving it to to Libya Libya's rescuing in quotation mark mostly bringing back but rescuing in quotation mark more and more people and here's an expression that you might have heard it's a case against Italy for supporting breaking human for supporting human rights violations where Italy told see what you know Libya needs to rescue and what happens if Libya rescues is they they don't have small boats they they don't carefully rescue people they just go there with a big ship let down big nets and ask people to climb in which is extremely dangerous Libyans also tend to sometimes shoot at other ships they also shot at German Navy ships and it's it's very difficult to to work together with them so how do you rate these cases there's there's a ground rule of not refusing people stating broadly that you cannot send back people to a country where they are going to be persecuted of course that would happen in Libya this picture here was taken on migrants day recently in Libya where people were asked to show their rescue they fell out of this recreation of a wooden boat and had to show how they climbed onto a rescue vessel to the Libyans demonstrating how they would rescue people you've also probably seen the the media pictures of these refugee camps no what I would recommend to you is read the Rui Asangi's article in the suit Deutsche Zeitung the the situation has further developed to be dangerous the the state sovereignty she says it is not only counted right at the border of the country but also in the the pre-border zone so stating that if someone has special information privileged information and hands that to another party in order for them to conduct an operation then for example Italy then is bound by the European declaration on human rights and by by acting on that information violates that declaration here by the way the the vehicles from mmk from my point of view the the German military is also part of these operations because these vehicles are used in such operations finally you all know that private rescue has been held back most ships have been captured in port by local governments later they will also have a talk here on that topic ports have been closed to these ships by the entire Italian Ministry of the Interior mr. Salvini you can't really do that but this was a case of bigger guns make the law those who have fled should probably be distributed fairly I don't think it's entirely bad it's not entirely an Italian job it's a European job to say these people but we dumped it on the Italian so they had no other way despite the solution not being optimal from my point of view there should be a rescue mission by the if by Europe it should be a rescue mission non military the Italians tried this once and they saved something like 130,000 people within eight months and we need another one of those missions I will end with a few slides on NGOs these NGOs I show here claim that helping migrants has been criminalized the Mediterranean is surveyed like no other sea in the entire world so we should use the surveillance that we have to save human lives and not exclude refugees thank you I see here front-middle microphone hello you said ours work is and speaking do you know where those sessions stand is there already some so the euro sure legislation is in a state where the European Council has clarified its position and solidified it and now this goes in the trial log of European law making as far as I know there's no campaign website and that's a gap that needs to be filled I mean there's a lot of activity in that area you know rescue by the rescues themselves and their supporters but especially here discussion discussing the whole Irish through a thing which technically isn't a euro sure thing because before there was a front-ex and euro sure and now there being more or less stuck together and that's the problem and against that we need a campaign website or blog or something where we collect information about it another question in the back right are there more questions this one question about working together with the dates with the data and the question is where would you have to ask for data so the questions where would you have to ask for data for the rescues you should be able to get this data from front-ex then again they themselves say they don't have a complete copy of it every year they do a report on the relevant situation and once the Libyans have their coordination center and all the other ancillary systems are up and running then they will be getting data from front-ex so in that case you could go one level up the European Commission and petition them to release that data I can't be more precise on that any more questions from the internet any more questions if you have a question please come to the microphone question is if there is private rescue from the north african countries not with ships as far as I know but there are some organization that work very closely there are some of the european civilian organizations that work very closely or in part derived from people from these countries there's an emergency telephone line and these are generally financed and supported by activists from Morocco and Tunisia for example but I personally don't know many ships what would you say what is there to rescue in mean time or short time this autumn it looked a bit critical because all ships were de facto out of operation for various reasons but then the Italians or as a bunch of Italian social movements and the Iona Odyssey which has been working it was a bunch of leftist groups but also some low-level government agencies local government and they used this ship to challenge their own interior minister Salvini it was a political charge saying you are not going to impound this ship and if you do we're gonna be standing in front of your door it was similar to the organization zebrücke if you don't know zebrücke it's a German organization that works in the Mediterranean and existed for about a year and they have ships down there right now so I'd paint a slightly more positive picture but the ships need political help at home right now there's two seawatch boats on the water with the refugees on board but nobody's letting them offload them and that needs political support one more question from the internet so if is it known how far the armor industry is involved in those processes they are involved because most of the technology I showed you today was developed at least at first for the military and then adapted to civilian use as our for German companies are involved I can say but especially with satellites and large drones the involvement of the high technology industry is significant there are companies from any states Saab from Sweden indoors from Spain Airbus from Europe do defense who also produce for the Bundeswehr so anti-motoristic campaigns can work together with us very very well because the introduction of military technology into civilian life is one of their topics there's another actor who's always there when there's bad things to be done which is Fraunhofer a bunch of institutes in Germany research institutes who do research for the government I forgot the acronym for them but if you want to build a little pressure on them then there are of course German companies that are involved who can be pressured oh and if you're somehow in involved in the satellite business there's a lot to be done the German Center for Air and Space is involved in getting the data down from the satellites that information superhighway in space in the Germany the it's done by it is it is belongs to Airbus and all the income for that goes to airbus so that's an interesting place where one could intervene is it now where all the personal people from those our agency come are coming from are those police people or who are they well that's complicated generally the personnel is from the EU members place this includes the military missions there's personnel working directly for enough for met but most is on loan from other agencies this has been the way since 2006 and on a format has their own building and there is personnel paid by front-ex there and that's going to change now and then that the amount of front-ex personnel is supposed to be doubled and there will be a fast strike force which does not work like a theme is so they don't ask yeah who can come how many people have you got how much how many helicopters so they had to phone around to get their people and gear but now it's supposed to be a sort of standing army of which two-thirds belong to front-ex directly there has been discussion about us some states have problems with this sort of thing especially the governments on the right side who basically went what border protection we're going to own thing we're not gonna let some EU guy interfere with that and they don't want front-ex to do anything more or less they want to do their own thing thank you Matias one Roy applause