INDECT

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INDECT ( English Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment ) was an EU research project as part of the 7th research framework  program in the field of "intelligent security systems". It ran from 2009 to 2014. The main goal of the research project was to develop a central interface in which monitoring data from many different sources can be linked with one another and automatically examined by computer programs for possible “dangers” and “abnormal behavior”.

A characteristic part of the “test installation” to be developed as part of the research project is the comprehensive video surveillance of the public space . In the process, computers should be able to automatically recognize “ abnormally ” acting people in the images from surveillance cameras and flying drones , and thus contribute to the preventive fight against crime . The data obtained in this way should be linkable with data from chats and social networks. The project was heavily criticized for its surveillance nature.

aims

The aim of the project was to automatically recognize criminally relevant threats and acts through the automated evaluation of images from the video surveillance of the public space and their connection with information from the Internet and a large number of other data sources . This should be achieved primarily through the bundling and automatic, computer-aided evaluation of the video data from a large number of surveillance cameras in real time , in order to enable " preventive police work ". For this purpose, software in the video surveillance images should be used to detect “ abnormal behavior ” in public spaces.

In addition to many other criteria, this includes “sitting too long” or “sitting on the floor” in public transport or in an airport, or losing your own luggage. People identified as suspicious on surveillance images are to be automatically identified by computer-aided face recognition and automatically and independently tracked by remote-controlled flying drones with surveillance cameras.

The primary target groups of the project are security authorities, police authorities and communities.

concept

The aim of the INDECT project was to bundle hardware and software from various monitoring technologies. Using “predictive analytics” and “relationship mining”, risks are to be analyzed and criminal offenses to be foreseen. For this purpose, one relies on the one hand on the monitoring of the Internet with the help of search engines to quickly find pictures and videos with the help of digital watermarks as well as automated search routines to detect violence or " abnormal behavior " on the World Wide Web as well as in Usenet and in P2P - Networks. Attempts are also being made to further develop computational linguistics so that the search routines are able to identify relationships between people and the context of a conversation, e.g. B. in chats , to be included in the interpretation of the language.

In addition, the police should be able to observe moving objects and subjects (people) with the help of INDECT. For this purpose, prototypes of mobile devices are also to be developed. For this mobile urban surveillance system (Mobile Urban Observation System) , flying cameras - so-called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV, also called drones or unmanned flying vehicles ) such as quadrocopters - are to be used. These UAVs should be networked intelligently and autonomously and cooperate with each other in order to both identify suspicious moving objects or people and to be able to track them in urban areas. A race or an escape on public roads could be rated as suspicious .

The data obtained from this should be saved in a database and supplemented with existing data. This includes, among other things, the communication data collected on the basis of data retention , surveillance cameras, cell phone location , face recognition and telecommunications monitoring .

By networking all these sources of information, people who are noticed by abnormal behavior can be easily monitored. For example, a person who posts a video clip with illegal content on the WWW could be monitored online via the automatic search routines and possibly identified. Photos from the ID card can be used to identify the person with the help of surveillance cameras equipped for face recognition. Alternatively or in addition to this, the target person's mobile phone can be located using GSM or GPS and the person can be monitored and tracked around the clock.

Detection of "abnormal behavior"

Rules for the detection of "abnormal behavior" in surveillance camera images:

As examples of "abnormal behavior", which would form the basis of the automated selection rules of the project, for example for the computer-aided evaluation of surveillance cameras, the critical initiative STOPP INDECT names among others:

  • Running, fighting or driving too fast on public roads,
  • Sitting on the floor and "too long" sitting, or forgetting your luggage in local public transport ,
  • as well as forgetting your luggage or “sitting too long” at airports.

Another program for recording abnormal behavior is SAMURAI (Suspicious and Abnormal behavior Monitoring Using a network of cAmeras & sensors for situation awareness enhancement)

expected results

The following points are expected as results of the INDECT project:

  • Test installation of surveillance systems for hazard detection in metropolitan areas,
  • Devices for mobile object tracking,
  • Creation of a search engine with the possibility of semantic search in documents based on watermarks,
  • System for tracking criminal activity and detecting threats on the Internet,
  • Ensuring data security and privacy protection through the use of watermark technologies and cryptographic algorithms .

Participating companies and organizations

Several universities and companies from various EU countries worked on the INDECT project. The German BKA refused to participate “because of the comprehensive monitoring concept of the project”.

Academic partners

Companies from Germany and Austria

Funding and schedule

The European Union financed the project with EUR 10.91 million; it ran from 2009 to 2014. The total costs were just under 15 million euros.

criticism

Due to the foreseeable encroachments on fundamental civil rights by INDECT , the project has come under international criticism. The project is heavily criticized in the media, by civil rights organizations , data protectionists and independent experts and the Orwellian character is often pointed out, based on the famous novel 1984 by George Orwell , in which an omnipresent, omnipotent and dictatorial surveillance state with surveillance cameras everywhere is portrayed. The "STOPP INDECT" initiative, supported by the Pirate Party , wrote:

“INDECT is the most comprehensive monitoring program that should ever be installed. It doesn't just include the internet. People on the street won't miss INDECT either. What sounds like confused science fiction could become a reality that is difficult to grasp from 2013 onwards. Science fiction was yesterday. INDECT is tomorrow. INDECT combines all data from forums , social networks (e.g. Facebook ), Internet search engines with government databases , communication data and camera observations on the street. INDECT will know where we are, what we are doing, why we are doing it and what our next steps will be. INDECT will know our friends and know where we work. INDECT will assess whether we are behaving normally or abnormally. "

A project-related ethics committee set up in response to the massive criticism was partly criticized because of its supposedly police and industry-related composition. In March 2011, the Commission stated that the project “would fully comply with the ethical principles and provisions of the EU.” In its opinion, it said that the automation of the evaluation of the video images as appropriate for the project reduces the risk of data misuse and ultimately the " Rights of the individual would be strengthened".

There was particular criticism that parts of the project were kept secret. In September 2010, the confidentiality regulations were tightened.

The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph wrote of an Orwellian plan in connection with INDECT .

Die Zeit describes the project as the EU's dream of a police state in which terms such as presumption of innocence or proof that can stand up in court no longer have any meaning.

Students at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal also criticize the European research project. The university groups Jusos , lira and Piraten speak out against the university's participation in INDECT. The General Student Committee (AStA) and the Student Parliament (StuPa) also demand an immediate cessation of the participation of Department E in the project.

In a report broadcast on December 5, 2009 as part of the news program Zeit im Bild , critics were quoted who believed that increasing data storage was not helping to combat crime; at the end of the project is the transparent person . According to the Austrian data protection officer Hans Gerhard Zeger , technical monitoring would increase the haystack of data scrap and it would become increasingly difficult to find the needle, the dangerous criminal .

Thilo Weichert , Head of the Independent Data Protection Center Schleswig-Holstein, admits: You can't say anything against the basic idea of using technical means to make the activities of security authorities more effective, but the INDECT project is conceptually at odds with European and German data protection and constitutional law .

In September 2010, the confidentiality regulations were tightened; Since then, an ethics council has decided on the publication of information concerning the INDECT project.

On September 8, 2010 Futurezone and the Pirate Party Germany published documents that were leaked to it after they were withdrawn by the Ethics Council for retrospective review. The documents are now available again unchanged on the official website.

INDECT and the associated secrecy are now massively criticized by members of the European Parliament . Democracy researcher Wolfgang Gründinger initiated an online petition on the Change.org campaign platform to protest against INDECT. Network activists called for a global day of protest against INDECT and TrapWire on October 20, 2012 .

Ethics committee

On March 15, 2011, the project was reviewed by an ethics committee made up of experts from Austria, France, the Netherlands and England. No violations of ethical principles were found. The Commission confirmed that all research activities under the program would fully comply with EU ethical principles and regulations.

The ethics committee stated in its statement:

“The algorithms and methodologies underlying the project rely primarily on previously available, usually public, information sources. These include monitoring cameras, public Web pages, etc. The research covered by the INDECT grant, will not consider processing of highly sensitive material, such as telephone intercept, VoIP, etc. ”

“The algorithms and methods on which the project is based are primarily based on already available, usually public information sources. These include surveillance cameras, public websites, etc. Highly sensitive data such as tapped phone calls or VoIP telephony call data , etc. are not recorded as part of the project. "

Rather, the aim of the project is to make the evaluation process for the diverse data collected (for example from surveillance cameras and the Internet) "more automatic", thereby eliminating the risk of human error and enabling "more informed decision making ". In addition, the automation of the evaluation would “lower the risk of misuse of the data” and thereby ultimately “strengthen the rights of the individual”; As a result, police officers could do more meaningful front-line work than constantly sitting in front of video surveillance systems (CCTV) for public spaces:

“The main objective of INDECT research is to make the monitoring and search process (and procedures) more automatic. This will ultimately allow for more informed decision-making. The value that will be added by deployment of INDECT research outcomes is that existing systems would operate with less human intervention, which will lower the level of subjective assessment and the number of human mistakes. This means less staff will be required for supervision of surveillance activities (eg monitoring of CCTV camera networks). This will resulting in less opportunities for illegitimate use of such information, or for human error to result in violations of the rights of the individual. There will also be economic benefits, in terms of the reduced staffing requirements. Police officers could be freed up to carry out frontline policing tasks. "

It was criticized that the ethics committee was largely composed of representatives from the police and industry. The results of the evaluation by the Commission in the discussion on the report on the interim evaluation of the 7th Framework Program were presented to the EU Parliament by the Polish MP Paweł Kowal ( PJN / ECR ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Project's Grant Agreement (accessed June 20, 2016)
  2. ↑ a b c d stop-indect.info
  3. ^ Matthias Monroy: All-round system for European homeland security . TELEPOLIS, January 4, 2010.
  4. ↑ a b c Official project description
  5. ↑ a b Kai Biermann : Indect - the EU's dream of a police state . Die Zeit , September 24, 2009.
  6. ↑ EU social network spy system brief, INDECT Work Package 4, 2009 . ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. WikiLeaks  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wikileaks.ch
  7. ↑ Matthias Monroy: "We have to deal with the situation" - The advancing digitization of police work opens up unimagined possibilities for the European prosecuting authorities. With “intelligent law enforcement” one even wants to foresee “deviant behavior” . In: concrete , issue 3/2010, p. 36
  8. ↑ piratenpartei.de ( Memento from September 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ SAMURAI (PDF)
  10. ↑ Official indect-project.eu website ( memento of the original from January 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved March 3, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.indect-project.eu
  11. ↑ Press release of the BKA ( Memento of the original dated December 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bka.de
  12. ↑ Erich Moechel: "Indect": video technology from Burgenland . futurezone.orf.at, November 9, 2009
  13. ↑ a b c Approach to ethical issues. Opinion of the ethics committee on the Indect website.
  14. ↑ a b Control - EU monitoring: INDECT on diving station. ORF Futurezone, September 3, 2010
  15. ^ Ian Johnston: EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behavior" . The Daily Telegraph, September 19, 2009.
  16. ↑ The total surveillance state? In the middle of Wuppertal instead of just being there!  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Jusos Wuppertal@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / jusos-wuppertal.de  
  17. ↑ l ira again calls for participation in the EU research project INDECT to be discontinued ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tob1as.de
  18. ↑ Piraten HSG & lira Wuppertal - press release ( Memento of the original from November 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-politik.de
  19. ↑ Congratulations - Wuppertal is researching for the police state! ( Memento of the original from November 7th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. AStA Wuppertal  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.asta.uni-wuppertal.de
  20. ↑ StuPa Wuppertal calls for the end of participation in INDECT ( Memento of the original from October 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.asta.uni-wuppertal.de
  21. ↑ Data protectionists warn against EU research program .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ORF ZIB@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / tvthek.orf.at  
  22. ↑ Thomas Salter: The modern criminal hunt - eyes in the sky of the cities - thanks to the EU . taz.de, December 24, 2009.
  23. ↑ Pirate Party publishes INDECT documents: EU is researching the surveillance state in secret . ( Memento from September 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) piratenpartei.de, September 8, 2010
  24. ^ Report on INDECT Ethics Board and documents launched by the Luxembourg Pirate Party . (PDF) wiki.piratepartei.lu, December 2010
  25. ↑ February 17, 2011: EurActiv.de interview with Stavros Lambrinidis: Indect means Big Brother
  26. ↑ Alexander Alvaro: Written Declaration No. 82/2010 on INDECT . February 10, 2011:
  27. ↑ Petition on Change.org
  28. ↑ INDECT is only a symptom - EU research needs effective control! Netzpolitik.org of October 9, 2012, accessed on March 4, 2019
  29. ↑ After INDECT, the second spy network welt.de follows , accessed on March 4, 2019
  30. ^ Homepage of the ethics committee. Indect project page
  31. ↑ wiki.piratepartei.lu (PDF)
  32. ^ Report on the mid-term evaluation of the 7th Framework Program of the European Union for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration (2011/2043 (INI)), April 18, 2011
  33. ^ Plenary debates on Wednesday 8 June 2011 - Strasbourg