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The European Commission (EC) has adopted a green paper on surveillance technology used by the civil society in the fight against terrorism, that will be open for public consultation until the end of this year.

The green paper, resulted from a public conference (Public-Private Security Dialogue: Detection Technologies and Associated Technologies in the Fight against Terrorism) that took place in November 2005, is meant to find the best technologies to be used "in the service of the security of its citizens" as was stated by European Commission Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security.

Some of the issues on which the green paper is focused are: standardisation, certification of tools, integration of detecting systems for various substances into a sole system, the improvement of the protection of mass events.

The EC aims to enhance the collaboration between the private and public sector in finding the best present practices and systems and helping in spreading them within the EU as well as to support the creation of new more efficient surveillance technologies, more available and at lower costs.

The green paper admits detections technologies are intrusive into private life and states limitations must be established to this intrusion when developing and using such technologies. It also stipulates that any legislation resulting from the consultation should "fully comply" with EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights and that "Particular attention must be paid to compliance with the protection of personal data and the right to private life."

However, concerns have been expressed by the defendants of civil liberties who believe the industry already has too much control over surveillance policies in Europe, as previously reported by EDRI-Gram.

The Statewatch report issued in April this year - Arming Big Brother - showed private security companies were given the power to decide on the way the EU money was to be spent for the implementation of security systems and that in the public-private dialogue, the private party was less represented.

Green Paper on detection and associated technologies in the work of law enforcement, customs and other security authorities - Press Release
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/06/317&am...

Green Paper on detection technologies in the work of law enforcement, customs and other security authorities (1.09.2006)
http://regmedia.co.uk/2006/09/06/ec_surveillance_green_paper.pdf

Tell the EC about surveillance (6.09.2006)
http://www.theregister.com/2006/09/06/ec_surveillance_consultation/

EDRI-gram : EU pays for surveillance and control technologies (26.04.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.8/eucontrol

Arming Big Brother The EU's Security Research Programme (04.2006)
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2006/apr/bigbrother.pdf