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 Our next stop is given to us by members of C Watch, C Watch as 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 text that's going to be implemented or that is implemented at the European border and how that technology is being used not for 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, except we're going to talk about Frontex. I was on the European border surveillance system. I'm like, I want to see since 2016. I help out with the I.T. there and actually wants to do the talk with Lena, who cannot be here today. So this guy was so kind and helped out. So, yeah. Hi, I'm Niska and I've been working for a city watch airborne operations for about a year and a half now. 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 the short video, which was partly the reason why I started preparing this talk upon it, like stripping on YouTube. And it was given in 2015 doing Developers Conference of S3 S3 produces game information software for governments, for private companies, etc. and get them money not. They had to piracy off the European border surveillance system. Yeah, talked it to the developers to kind of recruit them. And when I saw that I thought like yep, people have to see this. You will see no. Why? It really important to say, like we cut the BBC European Union a lot. You might think, oh, my gosh, there is another bureaucrat today. He is going to talk about, you know, minimum size of bananas, which can be solved in EU. But we will be talking about more important things today than bananas. We'll be talking about internal security. We'll be talking about challenges which we are facing today as Europe and how Meyer agency Frontex helps member states of the 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 dead 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. And 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, perfect environment. If there is a one person onboard infected with Ebola. Entire boat can be infected. Then you can imagine what can happen if that boat will land on one of our 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. The member states can use those capabilities to do the proper job. 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 euro eurozone, which you say European border surveillance system. And this framework is and will be the main tool for Europe to improve situational awareness, to increase reaction capability of the external borders for three main goals. Save as many people as possible. Find out old criminals and terrorists trying to reach European Union borders. And I said bother to say things like this. That's the most important one. So we decided a couple of years ago to invest in these capabilities. Today we would call it strong tax code. GM is the main engine of Fr
ontex core JSE 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 a daily basis, we are looking for new data sources from different providers. There is no limits there. I would say sky's the limit. We are our 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 a lot of my platform. Of course, we have here a basic JS capabilities like we can decide which one which base map we want to use. I will not show you that because probably that's a basic stuff for us. But one of the requirements I set for us was to develop a system that operate or it's only finger nothing else. So we decided to try 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 the touch screens or tablets that can drop different data sets on the screen. So we have, for instance, a full picture about all commercial fishing vessels right now on open sea. We are using diverse group of reporting systems, areas, satellite areas, LRAD, long, great range application and traffic VM s for fishing vessels, even positioning on on sort of some of the pleasure boats. Yes. So I think what has transponder on it, we can see it here. And I will tell you in two minutes, why is so important for us and for our operators in order to. What we try to do. We tried to provide to our users and 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 in sea right now. Today at 6 o'clock, the size of waves here in this area is 2 meters. That officer can play and see how the situation will change in the next hours. We also provide a simulation where the board can end up. We take into account we have models which are using currents, temperature of the sea, everything to p
redict where a center size of the boat with certain engine capabilities can be. And keep in mind, I present you today only part related to situational awareness. Situational teacher, real to new time. That's let's say, 40 percent of our job. 60 percent is risk analysis where our colleagues from Risk Analysis Unit are using extensively JS platform as James platform to predict how the situation will change in the future. What are the new trends and the visualize that there? 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 on the maps. On what maps? On portals. And I think that that's a successful example. How does gyres can support the 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 for my story. Most of you probably because you can say yes, because of your job. You saved those people, those faces of those kids, you know, probably maybe not those, because I don't feel sure they can present you the real pictures of kids we saved because of some legal aspects. But you can say, yes, you contributed to to this processes. So let's say that's a big thank you from us, from our government for you. Thank you. So, yeah, sorry that we saw such a long video. We already cut it in Lagos as much as we could because we didn't want to show like such a long blob. But yeah, we thought like, yeah, it's like really interesting to show this mindset and to show what they like. Yeah. How they sell what they are doing, which is. Yeah, we can see that is not the case as they describe it there. So now what's slightly talk about like the second area, why Frontex is actually. Yeah. Why Frontex says it's needed. So yeah the shortest read like an eighteen eighty five. The European Union's are countries within the European Union wanted to do this bottoms area which in 1995 actually became like the bonus area. And fr
om there on Frontex actually wasn't in there and started in two months, six with the second bonus code and they're like they organized that the countries are required to do. They're basically organized like those checks. How are how they are POMALYST, how strict they have to be, etc. 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 provide or 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. How when I think that the border controls in a way that they're like. 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 using them. What kind of tools would go into later? And they do a risk analysis, which has been also part of our research. When we look at the budget of Frontex, we see a slight increase, especially in the next year, probably because of the situation in Europe right now. Yeah. Like the idea is, it's like not to. How about actually where it's needed but instead like build up this fortress Europe with. Yeah. Quite a bit 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, yeah, a little bit undefined. And what's really important, the budget of that, which was like in a million is not equal to the Frontex budget. That means like it was like. EDIT even led to this whole whole lot of money. It's there to generate like a situation picture within Europe like this. This whole map thingy you just saw. And what's also really relevant also like a pretty frontier situation, analysts switch means like they're n
ot only looking at the direct borders, they also look into the three border areas. That means within Africa, the sub-Saharan Africa, people starting moving. There might be a problem for Europe. They want to use drones, satellites, underwater drones like on land, drones, everything like. It's like they really watch too much James Bond movies. And what's really important like that, they sell all of this. I also think, like, they want to save human lives. You also just saw saw this dude talking about how important these children are to him. But when you look at what they actually doing, it's like the exact opposite. It's all about building up the fortress Europe. So and what's also really important is saving human life aspect was only added up to a lot of pressure of the opposition in the European Parliament. And after three people died in front of Lampedusa one week before all of this was established. So and you see it again, like like a quote from the European Commission after bringing it into programs like it. It's all about saving human lives and for sure. But across traffic. But yeah, actually just saving lives. So and here now we go through some of the slides that he just presented. So you can see I hope it's quite small so that they see like like how they. So they have like this weather data. They have this. This started that. That means the ship's positions and the satellite pictures, et cetera. And they wanted like pushed into this combined service so that like everybody, God can just do it with a web service with one thing, which is like slight problem when you think about like how much data is activated in there and what decisions might be taken because of the data which is activated there. So and there you see like how they it. So they have the Frontex vessels, they have the number, but merchant vessels, they have the European military missions and all of that goes then together into this jet system. And in the eurozone, it work what the data can be accesse
d. What's really important forth for us like this, not just from 2014. So they already start having their complete data sources about everything. What's actually happening is happening in the Mediterranean Sea. That means DHS data, which is the position out of every commercial ship, which would be really, really interesting us. Nico, we'll tell you later way. But you'll like it's it's just closed within like this, this black box, Frontex, when he talks about satellite detection services, what's 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 supplies do not 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 or. The Earth all the time. Instead, they move around all the time. That means that they cannot have like a life picture of the Mediterranean Sea. Instead, like this, the satellite is passing by every once in a while. And there you can see basically what what what the time frames also like. Every day between the different time that they are able to see this area. So they don't have this this 24/7 surveillance that which is why they want to use drones and inspect and make this autonomous drones, which can play all the time in swamps. Rabbi, I would 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 you can see basically how they do the ultimate, ultimate heist analysis so that they can see when you see a green triangle, it means that is already a data point from the system. So from from this official system where they where they sent 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. And every ship, which is like not matching the signal, is something which might be suspicious. And especially like if then th
e ship goes straight north towards Lampedusa, et cetera. It might be something where they might put Domesticate. So which is really interesting when we look at the case that we could talk about, because if this is the case, if this stuff is working, they can see a lot of stuff which whether either should inform 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. So and we don't know how 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 if 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 plane, a drone or something like this, showing them risking risking a boat so that we'd have like the really big question, like, why do they have to start? And we don't. So and known this are going to talk about. Yeah. Like one case, which is really interesting in this context. And as Nic said, this information would be immensely important for our work as well. Or 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 distressed cases anymore by the Rescue Coordination Center, even if we are the closest vessel in the area. For example, we 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 and we witness a lot of cases over this year where we know that Frontex and other European authorities knew about boats in distress 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 onboard. 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 date. And on that day, there was one survivor still onboard. And the other 14 had died. We from 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 with which to which people can make calls from satellite phones. If they are on the move and from a line 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 and 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 is has become, unfortunately, one of our main tasks to record everything that we witness to then be able to threaten them, but also potentially assist in like court cases that might take these people in some future and bring bringing that kind of behavior to justice only after this threat that 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 there 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. Yes. So what we talked about so far, like with IRAs, were are programs which are like already running at the moment, which would like building up at the moment like two to get it running, like if it's running, I actually have no idea. But what's really, really interesting when we're looking to 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 age giving budget for scientific research in areas that are interesting somehow politically for the European Union. And yet it's 80 billion euros spent. And this money is a lot of this money is spent also to private companies and especially companies like Tallis, for example, which would like this leg involv
ed 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 computer companies. And also a lot of the stuff can be used. Yeah. Military afterwards. The first thing I want to talk about is a border control. What is the code like? They are really awesome with the names. It's the idea about us or what its voice like a third country nationals. That means like I know people from the states or people from from Indio or whatever want to travel into the European Union. They they have to go through a process where they have to like apply for the visa and then also likely get into like how they get in. And they're already like a risk analysis about how dangerous the person is, has a certain this risk and this will happen in a web browser with a webcam. So the ideas 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 then this webcam ja, ja, ja of 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 linked the article, the sources. It's really worth reading. I think everybody who saw the talks about biometric systems of Starbuck on this Congress knows how good those things are working. And they yeah, they are working like as good as those avatars look. So. And what's really interesting, like what's what's actually happening like behind all the systems and they so that they have a have a website. I bought a control of that I guess. Or you can Google it. And then they give some internals which is that so. And I mean, you can get kind of an idea that you have the client site there and the the the possible unit that they have at the bottom check points. But what is actually happening like in the middle of it? No. Like, yeah, maybe like people can understand it. And that w
ould be really interesting in what's happening there. What I'm really interested just like this database partly in the middle, because like that they start collecting data. Weirdly, biometric data, obviously, and we know what happens once an agency is collecting the stuff. Other agencies also want to 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 start to end like in privacy concerns, like if it's legitimate to collect all the sort of people who just want to travel into the European Union for sure. Like it when you think protect first we. We sure like. Yeah, it's like all inflow of terrorists and. Yeah. For sure. Saving human lives. But yeah, it's like that the mindset they have that they want to collect all this data. And what I think is really worth mentioning, like project partners, so like the University of Ottawa is working also on the project. So yeah. And the next program, robot. It's like they're like really good with those names. It's like a fully functional autonomous body system. That that means like they have no clue what it means because like if you want to have a fully functioning autonomous policy summit, it sounds like kind of terminator for me like that. They talk about like drones in the air and the water on land and they want to operate in swamps and they want to do it electrically. And that's what they want to make, like this picture of the Mediterranean Sea probably off where they have this like all the time. Life's the way in which they can document and playback as they want to watch. 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 leg with with with multiple drones on costs. And what's really interesting, they use like a mobile operations center, which is the Moros, which maybe some of you will know. It's like the standard police surveillance car i
n Berlin. So it's 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, it's quite a hard task. And if you if you see how they talk about it, like I'm really curious if this actually work because like that's the extra really interesting question. If they say they have the capabilities that they say they have. They watch life. What's happening then? They are able to to see like life how people die in there and if it's not the case. They spend a lot of money on this cyber B.S.. Well, what we actually have like not to like who is who is actually controlling it because like that they are like, no, this this momentum where they say, like, we're protecting the borders, they're terrorists coming look like this and like gather the migrant crisis and the wave 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 one one has collected, other people also want to help 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 take the spoils, as long as they're there, like no legal ways to go into Europe. We have those irregular ways. That means people are forced to take this waste. And that means like, yeah, we're enabling nature to to like in case the people want to get into Europe in an irregular way. We're like enabling it within generating those big, big flows by not enabling legal Western Europe, then Western frontiers, Frontex starting needs to be more public. We have to have access to that and researchers need to have access to that. And John. John, this leads me to 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 it. What's also important to transport transparency in the decision process. So when they make this risk analysis, those risk and this is like immense impacts on on on human lives in the end. So we have no clear ideas how they're matched. We have no ideas like what data they take and what data they don't take to make those risk analysis. And Frontex is trying to act like a console where, well, sledge NGO scan can like work together with them and watch over that, see what's the supply for that and see which was declined to do so. And what's important? Same private system. That's very one. So and that's a. 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. Question from the Internet. If we have, we'll take from the signal angel. Yes. Any questions? There's no question for the crowd to ask. 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 GDP are in some way that maybe can assist in in making the 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 fight to get, for example, like a startup from from by our right. I think those debit card requests. The thing is like it's commercial data source, so that means meaningless. They most likely get it for from commercial service. So so the question is like that they maybe like this this corporate thing again and what just happened is fact and starts 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 two possible points, because we estimate we guess that they actually quite close to it. Maybe you can also talk about like X, like your weight constitute two points
 then that they should say so. And they also like the concept. No, they don't have the same number two to sort of as a follow up to this, like is there enough public information or almost public information like ADP from the aircraft and a. Yes, from the ships to watch would 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 areas and their ideas be transponders to hide where they are? Yeah, they do. That's the short answer. Yeah. I mean, it's a bit over 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 yet 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's that's doesn't fit with what they really want to 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 yeah, 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 pe
ople back to help. And we don't have any insight really into it. Apart from being there and seeing them do this like no one thinks, look for a very interesting talk. I was just thinking, I'm wondering if this surveillance system, if or when it's implemented, could actually backfire, because as far as I know, it's highly illegal to ignore mayday calls to not help for any personal thoughts that are within reach. So if it's like a 24/7 monitoring of the entire Mediterranean Sea, every time a vessel sinks, does it's being watched somehow, automatically or manually. So every time does the 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 some out of the public, we would be like super happy about that. But yeah, like it could absolutely backfire. That's also why we really want like transparency in this data. And once this started to be to be shared publicly because it could also be used as a control for them to monitor them. I mean, well, it's like this it's like this whole privacy debate. Like I think it's still quite a creepy system, but yeah, a forum for gathering evidence on what they do. It might be super interesting. Question from the Internet as a question. Yes, yes. Internet asks when human rights violations are being monitored or proofed. Aren't there any procedures of you law enforcement to take consequences on that? Crimes sing. Case of watching but not supporting. Mm hmm. It's a bit tricky. So for us as civilians, we can't take the states if if they're in this case breaking the law or the Libyans to court. We don't have that right. States could do that. And 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 and their relatives could also sue them. B
ut most of the times, these people are not actually anywhere in Europe, for example, where they have access to a home, just jurisdictional system. So that's the one problem with some cases with state actors involved. Prosecutors in the respective state could could sue them. And this is mainly interesting in the case of Italy, because Italy has Marine ships down there from from the from the Navy. And there are still some forces in Italy, I'd say, who are investigating into this direction and who were also in touch with and giving giving our data. So that potentially, at least with it, like Italian navy, that there could be some effect. But for now, all we can do is either publicize this and make it. Yeah. Europe wide knowing 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 you also wanted to that was also really important when you when you look at those systems, that's like really hard sometimes to get a responsibility like one responsible person in this whole. But 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 the country, A or B, this is this is like a really abstract process where we're like a lot of people take decisions which lead up into this decision, which make it impossible for people to enter Europe. But you don't have like this one person, which is which is responsible for that, which also those really complex systems. So last question for microphone number two, please make a chart. So thanks for the talk and for the great work you're doing. Pivoting off the question, but it is another 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 wha
t they're seeing or what data that are leaking that they're not aware of? Not so far, except for radio calls that we read this or like the BLM people definitely here. But we are like high interest. Everybody can help us do that. So unfortunate. That's all the time we have for questions. I want to again, thank you very much for the work that you're doing. It's amazing. And thanks for the great job.