LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES

Work Package 6

Objectives

1. To study the most representative counter-radicali-sation legislation in the EU with an overview of binding trans-national norms and compare them. This is the first step to explore the need and potential for harmonisation of counter radicalisation regulations, policies and strategies at EU-level, by means of organising workshops that gather all the relevant counter-radicalisation stakeholders and European legislators.

2. To analyze the legal and ethical aspects of all technologies to be developed by the project in order to modify or remove any questionable feature at design time, and to ensure that the developed counter-radicalisation tools can be legally deployed in the studied jurisdictions, to start its exploitation as soon as the project is completed

Overall approach

Our approach is based on three principles: Broad, Global and Trend (BGT)

• Broad: There are as many definitions of radicalization as authors. On our report, both regulation on radicalisation offences related to terrorism and the regulation of acts that lead to violent acts that deny fundamental rights, have been considered.

• Global: Our report also includes analysis of the more representative international anti-radicalisation legislation in the field of criminal law procedure law and Internet Service provider law, in the European Union, the Council of Europe and the United Nations Organizations.

• Trend: To provide the report with a systematic aspect and be able to contextualise the battery of instruments in order to provide a comprehensive perspective the non-inforced legislation has been included.

UMH – Legal & Ethical Issues

Resistance versus alignment in terrorism legislation

The definition of terrorism itself has been an issue of some content, given the lack of consensus about its conceptualisation and scope. The attacks on the World Trade Center propelled the international community to adopt a common commitment, implying a tendency of setting common objectives to efficiently fight against terrorism, since the transnational aspect of the phenomenon does not allow States to achieve it by themselves.

Extension of the concept of terrorism

The first regulations typified classic crimes of terrorism and those identified with the effective damage of a good. Nowadays, not only is it considered a terrorist act to effectively attempt crime against people or things, but also the fact of publishing messages on social networks with certain characteristics; organising or facilitating travel with terrorist purposes; or regularly visiting websites that could potentially radicalise the readers.

Change of approach (reactive versus preventive)

The first legal instruments used to react to the attacks, configuring instruments that punished the behaviour directly related to the attacks. However, reacting to such events is necessary but not sufficient to achieve the essential goal of effectively preventing them to happen. On this account, since the attacks in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005, a new set of instruments were developed by EU, CoE and UN to provide a preventive response.

Intervention on Internet and Involvement of Internet Services Providers (ISP)

Extremists use the Internet to communicate, to disseminate their speech, to recruit, to radicalise and to train among others. The effective transnationality of the phenomenon makes the prosecution of terrorism especially difficult. These situations imply the inclusion of digital service providers since they can identify easier criminal behaviour happening on their platforms.

Fundamental Rights versus Security

International legislation has provided investigatory bodies and intelligence with stronger investigatory powers, potentially limiting fundamental rights. This is a result of efforts to reach radicalized subjects before they can grow and commit or facilitate the commission of a terrorist attack by others. Therefore, there occurs a notable impact on fundamental rights.

Next Steps:

The next step is to conduct an Analysis of Criminal law regulation and counter-radicalisation in a selection of EU Member States involved in the prevention of radicalization based on the criteria noted below, using the previous BGT approach

• For its a long history in anti-terrorist legislation as Spain or Ireland.

• Having suffered numerous terrorist attacks as France or UK.

• For having laws with striking features such as Germany.

• For having experience in prevention programs like Denmark.

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• Broad: There are as many definitions of radicalization as authors. On our report, both regulation on radicalisation offences related to terrorism and the regulation of acts that lead to violent acts that deny fundamental rights, have been considered.

• Global: Our report also includes analysis of the more representative international anti-radicalisation legislation in the field of criminal law procedure law and Internet Service provider law, in the European Union, the Council of Europe and the United Nations Organizations.

• Trend: To provide the report with a systematic aspect and be able to contextualise the battery of instruments in order to provide a comprehensive perspective the non-inforced legislation has been included.

Resistance versus alignment in terrorism legislation

The definition of terrorism itself has been an issue of some content, given the lack of consensus about its conceptualisation and scope. The attacks on the World Trade Center propelled the international community to adopt a common commitment, implying a tendency of setting common objectives to efficiently fight against terrorism, since the transnational aspect of the phenomenon does not allow States to achieve it by themselves.

Extension of the concept of terrorism

The first regulations typified classic crimes of terrorism and those identified with the effective damage of a good. Nowadays, not only is it considered a terrorist act to effectively attempt crime against people or things, but also the fact of publishing messages on social networks with certain characteristics; organising or facilitating travel with terrorist purposes; or regularly visiting websites that could potentially radicalise the readers.

Change of approach (reactive versus preventive)

The first legal instruments used to react to the attacks, configuring instruments that punished the behaviour directly related to the attacks. However, reacting to such events is necessary but not sufficient to achieve the essential goal of effectively preventing them to happen. On this account, since the attacks in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005, a new set of instruments were developed by EU, CoE and UN to provide a preventive response.

Intervention on Internet and Involvement of Internet Services Providers (ISP)

Extremists use the Internet to communicate, to disseminate their speech, to recruit, to radicalise and to train among others. The effective transnationality of the phenomenon makes the prosecution of terrorism especially difficult. These situations imply the inclusion of digital service providers since they can identify easier criminal behaviour happening on their platforms.

Fundamental Rights versus Security

International legislation has provided investigatory bodies and intelligence with stronger investigatory powers, potentially limiting fundamental rights. This is a result of efforts to reach radicalized subjects before they can grow and commit or facilitate the commission of a terrorist attack by others. Therefore, there occurs a notable impact on fundamental rights.

Next Steps:

The next step is to conduct an Analysis of Criminal law regulation and counter-radicalisation in a selection of EU Member States involved in the prevention of radicalization based on the criteria noted below, using the previous BGT approach

• For its a long history in anti-terrorist legislation as Spain or Ireland.

• Having suffered numerous terrorist attacks as France or UK.

• For having laws with striking features such as Germany.

• For having experience in prevention programs like Denmark.

APPROACH

• Attacks upon a person’s life

• Attacks upon the physical integrity

• Kidnapping or hostage-taking

• Destruction to a government or public facility, a transport system, an infrastructure facility, including an information system, a fixed platform located on the continental shelf, a public place or private property likely to endanger human life or result in major economic loss

• Seizure of aircraft, ships or other means of public or goods transport

• Manufacture, possession, acquisition, transport, supply or use of explosives or weapons

• Release of dangerous substances, or causing fires, floods or explosions,

• Interfering with or disrupting the supply of water, power or any other fundamental natural resource

• Illegal system interference (cyberterrorism)

SELECTED COUNTIRES

Bosnia andHerzegovina

Belgium Spain Italy Denmark

Germany Netherlands Ireland Greece France

• Public provocation to commit a terrorist offence: whether online or offline, of a message to the public, with the intent to incite the commission of one of the offences listed before

• Recruitment for terrorism: soliciting another person to commit or contribute to the commission of one of the offences listed before

• Providing training for terrorism: providing instruction on the making or use of explosives, firearms or other weapons or noxious or hazardous substances, or on other specific methods or techniques

• Receiving training for terrorism

• Travelling for the purpose of terrorism

• Organising or otherwise facilitating travelling for the purpose of terrorism

• Terrorist financing

• Aggravated theft with a view to committing one of the offences before

• Extortion with the same purpose

• Drawing up or using false administrative documents with the same purpose.

• Publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent, or national or ethnic origin

• Public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material

• Publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes

• Publicly condoning or denying or grossly trivialising the crimes defined in Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal appended to the London Agreement of 8 August 1945

United Kingdom

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If these crimes are committed

with Internet Directive

2000/31/EC allow to block

and removal the illegal content.

Also article 21 of Directive 2017/541

What can LEAs use?

to facilitate

• Decision 2002/465/JHA on joint investigation teams

• Decision 2002/584/JHA on the European Arrest Warrant and Surrender Procedures

• Directive 2016/680 on the protection of natural persons with regard to processing of personal data

• Directive 2016/681 on the use of passenger name record (PNR)

Police and legal cooperation Information Exchange Obtaining objects, documents and data for use in criminal matters

• Decision 2005/671/JHA on the exchange of information and cooperation

• Decision 2006/690/JHA on the simplification of the information exchange and intelligence among information services

• SIENA• Schengen Information

System (SIS II)• Decision 2008/615/JHA on

the stepping up of cross-border cooperation

Directive 2014/41/EU regarding the European Parliament and the Council