Drones, surveillance at sea poses new privacy problems

In its strategy to 2024L’European Maritime Safety Agency (Emsa), says thank you “to its investments over the years in hardware, software and knowledge, today Emsa has the ability to merge different data sources and services and deliver a rich and integrated representation of the maritime situation“. The result is the fruit, on the one hand, of images from space, starting with Copernicus European satellite serviceson the other of the last piece of the project, i drones and the data they bring, which, Emsa writes, now provide “an offshore surveillance level to a far more comprehensive level“.

All information is shared by Emsa with the authorities involved. Primarily Frontex, the European border control agency. The latter is acquiring a increasingly important power in the architecture of the Union, which places an increasing emphasis on border surveillance. Suffice it to say that the Commission in the budget 2022 awarded the highest figure, 769.7 million, to Frontex (a part was later frozen by the European Parliament) and 319.6 million, 12.9% of the total, to Eu-Lisa, which provides IT services to manage migration flows and borders. Over time, the two agencies have begun to work more and more closely.

The investigation

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If Frontex puts men and means, Eu-Lisa provides the digital infrastructure to monitor the boundaries of what increasingly resembles a “fortress Europe”. The same fortress that 12 countries of the Union recently proposed to defend by raising walls at the borders and that for the seven-year 2021-27 has budgeted 22.7 billion for the management of external borders. Any help, any source of information is well regarded. So also Emsa, who presents herself as “the eyes of the European Union on the sea”Can help the cause. So much so that, when the agency began experimenting with drones to increase surveillance of the seas, in 2018, Frontex is interested in the matter, as emerges from the 320 pages on its business that Emsa delivered to Wired (while not meeting all requests, not responding within the time limits set by the community rules and obscuring significant parts of the documents).

TO Wired Chris Jones, executive director of the British non-governmental organization Statewatch, explains that “Emsa is supporting the construction of “Fortress Europe” purely through the provision of surveillance services. In recent years he has contracted several companies with the task of operating drones on his behalf. In part these are used for maritime pollution monitoring and to facilitate sea rescue. However, surveillance records are also provided to Frontex, whose border control work often puts people’s lives at risk, for example, by informing the so-called Libyan Coast Guard about the location of boats in distress.“.