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Spy agencies launch 'real-time' terror tracker

25 September 2016

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"European intelligence agencies launched a shared "interactive real-time" database over the summer to track suspected jihadists, EUobserver has learned.

The move is part of a broader EU-wide trend triggered by last year's migration crisis, a spate of terror attacks and the threat of Islamist fighters returning to Europe from Syria. Dozens of intelligence agencies at the Dutch-led Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG) in The Hague set up an "interactive operative real-time information system" of people suspected of being "jihadist troublemakers", said Germany's federal ministry of interior in a document seen by this website....

One senior EU official has described it as an IT system with people working on it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How they access people's details in real time and what details are stored is unclear.

There are also larger questions on oversight and fundamental rights, and the system has echoes of the US-led mass surveillance disclosed in 2014 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The blow-back from the Snowden revelations is still playing out. Despite this, 23 out of 30 European intelligence agencies and services "promised" to participate in Operation Platform. Germany says it has sent one officer from its domestic intelligence agency, the BfV.."

See: Spy agencies launch 'real-time' terror tracker (euobserver, link)

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