University involved in scheme to monitor the public

The University of York is attracting heavy criticism from civil liberties campaigners by helping to develop a controversial five-year EU funded research programme called Project Indect, which will develop technology to monitor the public for signs of "abnormal behaviour".

Project Indect aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

The University of York’s website states that Project Indect is "a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence".

With a budget of £10 million, the project also involves colleagues from nine other European countries and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The development of this 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence comes at a time when the EU is increasing funding for fighting terrorism, crime and managing migration to £900 million.

There are growing concerns about the nature of the EU's growing powers, which civil liberties groups claim go over the head of individual nation states and are thus a threat to any liberal democracy. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, described the existence of Project Indect as a "sinister step" and the fact that it is on a European scale as "positively chilling".

Simon Richards, Director of the pressure group The Freedom Association, has told the Yorker that the university must drop the programme, "Project Indect is all too typical of the workings of the unelected European Union corporate State... Now that David Cameron has hoisted the white flag on the EU Constitution, the British people will need to become accustomed to more of this sinister intrusion in to their lives. It flies in the face of the freedom of expression which every university should stand for. If the University of York is to maintain its high reputation it must withdraw from Project Indect."

Of particular concern to civil liberties groups is the prospect that Project Indect information will be gathered by the EU Joint Situation Centre (SitCen), which the thinktank OpenEurope claims is "effectively the beginning of an EU secret service".

Stephen Booth, a columnist with the Guardian, author and analyst at Open Europe, told The Yorker, "The problem with the EU funding these types of projects is the lack of democratic accountability. Citizens are left completely in the dark as to who has approved them and there is no way to ensure that civil liberties are being duly respected. The absence of any real political debate about the increasing use of new surveillance technologies in our society is a very dangerous trend, which is especially acute at the EU level."

Those involved with the programme have defended its existence. Superintendent Gerry Murray of the PSNI explained that, "Within this Project Indect there is an ethical board which will be looked at: is it permissible within the legislation of the country who may use it, who oversees it and is it human rights compliant".

At press time, there had been no response from the university to these criticisms.

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