Cross-border crime
February 15, 2012
Crime knows no borders: Increasingly, terror attacks are being planned in one country, supported in another and carried out in yet another country. Combating terrorism through more international cooperation is the focus of this year's European Police Congress in Berlin, attended by some 1,000 security experts from more than 50 countries.
"Since the September 11 attacks, terrorism is a huge issue in international police cooperation," explains Dieter Kugelmann, Professor for international law at Germany's police academy. At the heart of the matter, he says, is stepping up the exchange of information and data.
Europol
There are numerous examples from the recent past that serve to illustrate how important cross-border police cooperation has become. In the case of the Frankfurt airport attack on US soldiers, or the so-called "Ikea bomber", or the fight against drugs and weapons dealers - it's very often international police cooperation that solves the cases.
"European cooperation essentially means a stronger network between the national authorities," Kugelmann says. "That way, we can get a grip on organized crime on an international level."
Key element of the cooperation is the European Union's criminal intelligence agency Europol.
"Successful police investigation requires you to have the right information at the right time in order to pass it on to the right institutions," says Dietrich Neumann of Europol's legal affairs unit.
Setting up the relevant structures is one of the basic conditions for successful cooperation, Neumann explains. And those structures first and foremost are data processing systems on EU level. Creating Europol was itself a crucial step in that direction. "We are the instrument of EU police cooperation; Europol is where all information gets connected and analyzed."
Cooperation
One of the pillars of the cooperation is the "Stockholm Program," which sees EU countries increasing multinational investigation teams. Also, the program wants to step up information exchange, create a common data base and set up an EU border control unit.
The "Prüm convention" is another pillar of European police cooperation. It deals with the exchange of data like vehicle registration, DNA and fingerprints to combat terrorism.
The European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS) was set up to achieve a more efficient exchange of information on criminal convictions between EU countries. Other plans currently being discussed are a European data base on air travelers as well as a data base on suspicious money transactions to combat corruption. National computer systems are to be integrated into a larger EU structure to facilitate cooperation.
Old problems, new solutions
"We already have a number of tools - but so far this is rather a problem than a solution," says Robert Esser, professor of international law at Passau University. The challenges of the future, he argues, go beyond merely overcoming the existing obstacles.
Dietrich Neumann of Europol argues that the Internet is playing an ever increasing role. "The question is how the police can keep up with the developments of the 21st century, when data can be transferred in a matter of seconds and we have new forms of cybercrime like phising, hacking or industrial espionage."
Kugelman has yet another example where cooperation is crucial: bank robberies taking place near national borders. Often, police are simply not sure whether they are allowed to follow a fugitive who crosses into another country.
"But our main problem is that national police in different European countries are not all on the same level," warns Andreas Nellberg of the police union Eurocop. "The first thing we need right now, are common basic standards across the EU - for instance when it comes to police training."
Data protection
How to handle data protection is yet another issue on the conference agenda. "We very quickly find ourselves caught between effective police work - protecting citizens - and data protection - protecting citizens' privacy rights," Neumann says. "We can't afford to lose people's trust in our work or their trust that the data we've stored is really safe with us."
"Data protection is something which hampers police efforts and at the same time has to be upheld as a crucial element of the rule of law," Professor Esser says. Exchanging data across borders and simultaneously protecting individual privacy is bound to remain one of the crucial challenges of the future.
Author: Johanna Schmeller / ai
Editor: Neil King