“By 2020, the European Union will have invested over €3 billion in the European security research programme, which is supposed to develop “innovative technologies and solutions that address security gaps and lead to a reduction in the risk from security threats.”
In practice, the programme has been dominated by corporations and major national research institutes who seem intent on introducing a surveillance society in the name of public security.
This is a particularly worrying prospect in a Europe where increasingly illiberal governments have used emergency situations to ensure “exceptional and temporary powers [are] permanently embedded in ordinary criminal law.” “
See: A chance to change EU security research policy for the better (EUobserver, link) by Chris Jones
And see: Market Forces: the development of the EU security-industrial complex