International Data Exchange between Police Authorities

In our globalised world, and especially in Europe, borders do no longer have the same meaning as twenty years ago, even less so considering the “cyberspace”. The benefits thereof are however accompanied by criminal threats which are increasingly met by international police cooperation. In this regard the cross-border exchange of information between security services is one of the central tasks. This paper shall give an overview of existing “smart” surveillance tools, the amount of international use thereof and the necessarily linked question of privacy protection on legal and technical level. The content shows a very brief outline of the research carried out within the collaborative EU Research Project SMART.