Privacy Talk with Daniel Drewer, Data Protection Officer at Europol: What is the goal of the data protection expert community network?
“This interview recorded on 16th October 2023 is talking about data protection and police organization.”
Kohei is having great time discussing data protection and police organization.
This interview outline:
- What is Europol and your role there?
- How have you developed EDEN（Europol Data Protection Experts Network) as a strong community?
- What is the goal of the data protection expert community network?
- What is Europol and your role there?
Daniel: Thanks Kohei. So of course with pleasure, so I’m working for Europol. Europol is the EU law enforcement agency. So that means that Europol is part of the EU public service. And as a law enforcement agency, we support EU member states in preventing and combating organized crime, cyber crime and terrorism.
And we do this since 1999. The first legal framework of Europol was the European Convention. And already at that time, part of the European Convention was already a tailor made data collection framework.
For Europol is, if you want an information hub for EU law enforcement agencies. In terms of size, we talk about an agency with more than 1400 staff members and we are based in The Hague in the Netherlands.
At Europol, there are working more than 250 liaison offices that are the connecting link to the national police forces, but their work here in Hague takes place in the same building.
Not only liaison officers by the way from EU member states, but also from Third States and International organizations outside the EU.
So for example, we have Japanese liaison officers here at Europol next to the liaison offices of the other third state. We are working with together. Europol is a multi-agency approach.
So that means we are not talking to us about liaison with the police, but if I can give an example, when talk about Italian law enforcement. We are not only cooperating with the Polizia di Stato, police, your stato but we also have a representative of the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Finanza here at Europol in the headquarters.
And that makes cooperation between Europol but also amongst members that much easier, because law enforcement cooperation is also that you have the possibility on short notice, to sit together with colleagues that have the possibility to support multinational investigations.
And this is possible here at Europol in our headquarters. If we don’t sit together in person, then we communicate of course with the secure lines. That means that we have from Europol 4600 Plus secure lines that go from the Hague, across the world, if you want.
We are here at Europol 24/7 operational center so it’s not that we work your nine to five but we will work around the clock and we are available to support analysis projects that are focusing on different crime areas.
We are working on these analysis projects with more than 160 crime analysts that are also based here in the Hague. We have and we maintain and we operate the so-called European information system.
You want a police record system within the EU and just to give you one number, we have more than 1.5 million objects in this Europol information system. This is information about offenses, individuals involved or linked to crimes, suspected persons, convicted persons .
So this is one that is one of the biggest systems that we hold here. We operate all this on the basis of a tailor-made data protection framework. So tailor-made data protection framework doesn’t mean not obeying the general data protection principles that you also find in general data protection regulation.
But tailor-made for the mandate of Europol and this framework is distinct from the framework that is applied to the national police of the EU member states, this framework is the shape, as you know, according to the law enforcement directive next to the GDPR but is tailor made because Europol is in a particular position.
Where we actually in the system has data protection safeguards integrated and for this systems, we need tailor-made tools. And this we operate now already since the European Convention form 1999. Today, the framework is called in the Europol regulation, which was amended in June, last year.
I think for those of the listeners that are not familiar with Europol, they might be familiar with how Europol Sometimes is portrayed in fiction. I think they are very important.
That’s to say that if you look at Ocean’s 11 movie or if you look at the chestnut man, which is now a recent Netflix movie, then you’ll see Europol agents using weapons, arresting people.
So one of the limits of the Europol mandate is that we are not allowed to use coercive powers. And I think that it is important to say we are here to support cross border information exchange and analysis.
We get more possibilities with our legal framework, but this is our core business and that makes us distinct from the National Police forces in the member states. Since 2010, Europol is an agency of the EU. So there was a change in the legal framework.
And also since then, we have formally appointed Data Protection Officer. I am m appointed as data protection officer and my main task as Data Protection Officer in the European police office is to act as an assurance provider to management to provide my opinion judgment and my advice regarding data protection compliance of the different process of operations at Europol.
And apart from that, I’m a second line assurance provider for police data on the one side but also obviously the staff data that we process. One of my tasks is to provide awareness, training, consultation to the controller so advising the controller and coordination between Europol and the data protection supervisory authorities.
- How have you developed EDEN（Europol Data Protection Experts Network) as a strong community?
Kohei: That’s very important work in police networks. I think in the digital field to investigate it and to inspect the crimes is becoming a very important role. The police agency, but also the data protection is also important to protect the fundamental rights that all these citizens.
The next question is about the transitions of your activity. First, on your profile, I explained you start to work in the Europol Data Protection Experts Network（EDEN）, there is a very important function to aggregate knowledge and networks with experts all over the world. So could you share about these networks? Then how have you developed this network as a strong community?
Daniel: Thank you very much Kohei. That is indeed particular at Europol and has by the way, also the full support of top management and we are talking here about Europol Data Protection Experts Network.
This is now operating since 2016. It was an initiative by the data protection office of Europol, where we said, we understand that data protection and law enforcement is a focus of the public and also of the political debate.
And before 2016 and also still today myself or one of my colleagues are invited to join discussions about law enforcement and data protection on public events.
And at that time, we understood that there are not a lot of law enforcement representatives that actually take part in this discussions and I think this discussions have to take place and they should be transparent and they should be public.
And at that time, we decided to say why we don’t get those independent DPOs, but our law enforcement officers or academics for example, or data protection experts in industries that somehow are connected to law enforcement.
We don’t gather them, give them a forum, and have an expert discussion in this forum. And it started very small, I have to say in 2016, I remember we had a conference at that time. It was even a conference, one of the first conferences in Copenhagen.
I think we were around 120 participants. And today that Europol Data Protection Experts Network even has more than 800 members. Two weeks ago, we had our 13th conference in Madrid, together with the colleagues from the National Law Enforcement and also the Spanish EU presidency.
（Movie: The conference of the EUROPOL Data Protection Experts Network (EDEN)）
※ Europol appreciates one of the members of EDEN, Prof. Hiroshi Miyashita from Chuo University, to join recent conference as a speaker.
And there are 250 participants that travelled to Spain to take part in this conference. And if you have a look at the conference program, which you can do on the website of the European law Academy, because we have a cooperation with the European law Academy.
- What is the goal of the data protection expert community network?
Then you will see we try to put all the hot topics that are there when we talk about law enforcement and data protection on this program. We invite colleagues where we believe they can provide interesting contributions to this and we have good discussions.
The overall goal is actually to share an awareness regarding the challenges and also to provide law enforcement also the possibility to share experiences when it comes to data protection compliance as well.
The core group of EDEN are actually the Data Protection Officers of the national police forces, which means Data Protection Officers of the national police forces in the EU and Schengen Associated Countries.
They meet at least three times a year for an operational meeting. So this is really like you would say that these experts meet on the fight against synthetic products in operational meetings.
Data Protection Officers in the EU member states also need and they have operational meetings as well as their operational meetings because it is about how to intern assurance providers to provide and shape data protection compliance in law enforcement.
And I’m very proud to say, the meetings are very fruitful and absolutely necessary. Because we of course on one side cooperate with the controller, we must be able to cooperate with supervisory authorities and that is very important that we have links between Data Protection Officers in the different police agencies.
So this is the all core group, and next to this core group there is the conference that we have once a year and we are always proud that so many colleagues from all areas of society are joining us and staying in contact with us over the year.
Also for your listeners and your community Kohei. If there is an interest to join this network, please just write me an email (dpo@europol.europe.eu) because this is a network by invitation. And we will get in contact and we can see what we can be together in this network, in shaping the progress there.
Kohei: That’s amazing the initiative, then I suppose the experts should be involved to get together to create more data protected environments not just only for the police but also the entire society which is very important.
And that is a strong commitment with you, and your colleague has done amazing work. As a next topic, I’m also very curious about your role as the Data Protection Officer at Europol to engage and communicate with some different authority in Europe such as the European data protection supervisor.
I think that you are close to work together with them to protect human rights in the police agency, so how do Europol and EDPS work together this time?
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