The Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Romania – the Helsinki Committee sent an open letter to several national and European institutions, expressing concern about a mass surveillance project implemented by the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) with European funding.
The project will use 25 million euros from the EU to buy software and hardware for "strengthening and ensuring the interoperability of information systems."
The project, called SII Analytics, is actually a mass surveillance project, as it can give SRI and other public institutions unlimited access to personal data collected and integrated in a large-scale "Big Brother" system. These powers are granted without any guarantees for respecting citizens' civil rights or limiting the access of SRI or of other public institutions to personal data. The project is therefore a getaway to serious violations of fundamental rights.
The main problems with this project are the following:
1. Generalized surveillance by combining databases
The project aims at aggregating data sets from all major public institutions and at allowing advanced search in order to permit inquiring any type of information about any citizen or resident.
The project includes a chapter on "behavioral analysis," according to which SRI can create for any citizen, including future parliamentarians, judges, prosecutors or entrepreneurs, a record of "good behavior" (consisting of information gathered from all government databases).
These records can be used for unlimited purposes and can
be correlated with information from other databases as well as other public
information (such as information from Facebook accounts), which would lead to
the creation of individual profiles.
2. The lack of guarantees and the potential for abuse
By aggregating databases, SRI will have uncontrolled access to any information about all citizens, a matter currently unregulated in Romanian law. The law on SRI dates back to 1991, and it does not provide effective control mechanisms that would ensure that the risk of abuse of any kind is reduced and that when abuses do occur sanctions are applied and the victims are compensated.
For example, according to this project, information about citizens can be accessed from a huge number of terminals (750), so basically any of the over 1,000 people who have access to the system will be able to use it for any purpose, even personal, without being subjected to control and without citizens being aware of it.
3. Using European funds to violate European rights
The 184-page project proposal was submitted on June 9, 2016, one day after the call for funding was publicly announced, and it was rapidly approved despite the fact that it violates Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, namely the rights to privacy and to personal data protection. SRI is currently already running a tender for purchase of necessary equipment and software.
4. eGovernance and the hidden purpose of the project
SRI has, according to the law, no competence in the field of eGovernance or in "development of tools for the prevention, detection and the taking of measures to reduce the redundancy of payments in the public area," although these are the fields where actions are proposed under the project.
Parts of the project (see chapters on "Facial Recognition" or "Interception of communications" as described in the explanatory document) also indicate that the project actually also has an unreported purpose: mass surveillance of the population.
Moreover, under the disguised motivation of "preventing fraud," the system will have facial recognition features and include a database of approximately 50-60 million images (passport or identity card photos) to which SRI will have unlimited access.
The Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Romania – the Helsinki Committee and three other NGOs sent a letter to both national and European officials urging for the public procurement process to be stopped.
At the same time, the signatories signal the need to introduce as a necessary requirement for accessing European funds the interdiction to use such funding for violating or limiting human rights. At a national level, the signatories also highlight the need for a public debate on the role of the SRI in the Romanian society and regarding the guarantees for avoiding abuses and increasing institutional transparency.
Signatories
The Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Romania - APADOR CH
The Association for Technology and Internet - ApTI
The Centre for Legal Resources
The public letter is available in Romanian here and a technical specifications analysis performed by ApTI is available in Romanian here.
