Brussels, 27/04/2007 (Agence Europe): Given the shortcomings with current vessel monitoring measures, it may be helpful to use information from the “open sources” of information and to apply the analyses of them, with a view to providing greater protection for infrastructure critical to the maritime sector. Information drawn from “open sources” has proved useful, at local level in particular, in that it has helped to detect and track vessels from the port of departure until they enter European ports, and thus determine the point at which illegal products have been landed and warn the customs authorities. Although the system still cannot be applied extensively at European level, it may become an additional source to the follow-up systems used at present. The potential of this contribution was presented at the first annual EUROSINT (The European Open Source Intelligence Forum) conference - Forum Eurosint - which was held last week in Brussels on 17-18 April, with the support of the vice president of the European Commission, Franco Frattini.
“Open sources” are sources of information which are accessible to all: the press (in all its forms, including RSS files), the Internet, material published by local or regional administrations or ministries, academic, economic or political research on a given subject, the registers of maritime companies - in short, anything which can provide specific, local and timely information on a given subject, without requiring recourse to classified documents. In the maritime sector, it could be possible, having analysed information gathered together in this way, to recreate the route of a ship or a pleasure boat or to retrace the movements of a ship and to deduce the risk that illegal trafficking has taken place, or even to work out the routes taken by illegal traffickers. The great advantage of this system, according to the organisers of the forum, is that it allows one to understand and to anticipate the moves of the traffickers, which is impossible with all other systems in place at the moment. Because, of all the panoply of instruments set in place by the European Commission over recent years (satellite monitoring systems such as the LTIR, or monitoring systems on the basis of VHF signals, used in AIS systems; and the obligation to notify departure 24 hours before arrival in the territorial waters of the EU for cargoes and when leaving port for vessels carrying dangerous products), there is nothing which guarantees permanent contact between the port services and the vessel. It is also possible to disconnect AIS systems, which provide customs officials with the position, speed, latitude and course of the vessel. Once the system has been switched off, often deliberately, the vessel disappears from radar screens, and it becomes impossible to determine its point of arrival, time of arrival or whether it has stopped off during its voyage. Secondly, the satellite navigation system does not cover all areas, leaving “gaps”, like the one off southern Gibraltar, in which a captain can hide the presence of the vessel and proceed to land illegal products.
Those taking part in the forum also stressed the fact that it is impossible to carry out checks on all vessels entering European ports (in the port of Antwerp, for example, only one vessel in every 10,000 is checked), particularly due to insufficient numbers of customs officials and a lack of harmonisation of inspection rules in the European ports; even though the proposed directive COM (2005) 0588 of the third maritime package provides for the obligation to check 100% of vessels entering European ports. There is also a problem which arises at institutional level, as the institutions are struggling to define competencies in the field of critical infrastructure. On the one hand, the member states are finding it difficult to implement the initiatives launched by DG TREN and on the other, the illegal trafficking dossier overlaps with the dossiers of other Directorates General of the Commission, such as DG Relex or DG Customs, often causing an institutional shuttle. The idea put forward by the Forum is finding increasing resonance within the Commission, which recognises that it uses information provided by the organisations working with open sources. National initiatives are also seeing the light of day. The British HM Revenue and Customs, which was set up in 2005 by the government, is tasked with detecting the illegal trafficking of drugs, tobacco, alcohol and other products. Apart from its research, using sources described above, the body has also recently started to use a “Web crawler” system on web sites, known as a Web Robot, which helps to find Internet sites which may provide the information required, and which is currently being used only in the field of fraud.
The objective of the EUROSINT forum, which is supported by the Directorate General “Justice, Liberty and Security” of the Commission, is to federate, at European level, potential providers of analysis on information gathered from open sources (the Internet and the media in particular), potential users (institutions, police, security agencies, military staff headquarters, etc) and enterprises which may provide technical instruments and procedures. Interpol, Europol, the OSCE, the EDA, representatives of several Ministries of Defence and many private companies regularly take part in the activities of EUROSINT, which was launched in September 2006. To find out more, see: http://www.eurosint.eu (aby)