The EU Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, has announced that she has opened an inquiry into the move of two former Europol officials to the conversation monitoring technology provider Thorn. This follows a complaint lodged by German MEP Patrick Breyer (Greens/EFA), who welcomed the decision in a press release on Monday 8 January.
The Ombudsman officially opened this inquiry on 20 December. The Thorn company, represented notably by American actor Ashton Kutcher, was at the forefront of media revelations about the closeness of the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, to American companies in the private communications surveillance sector, at the time when she was preparing the controversial regulation on the removal of online child sexual abuse content (see EUROPE 13265/12).
“Despite the obvious conflict of interest, the transfer of the officials, who had already been involved in work on child sexual abuse content at Europol, was approved by the authority. One of the officials was involved in a pilot project at Europol for the AI-based analysis of abuse reports, is now registered with the Bundestag as a lobbyist for Thorn and travelled to a Europol meeting with his former colleagues in his new role”, explains the MEP.
Ms O’Reilly has asked Europol for access to all documents relating to these moves by 15 January.
Link to the inquiry: https://aeur.eu/f/aan (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)