Information Exchange for the Purpose of Crime Control: the EU Paradigm for Controlling Terrorism – Challenges of an “Open” System for Collecting and Exchanging Personal Data

The paper underlines the role of the exchange of information on crime control and its consequences, highlighting the Union's example of countering terrorism, which plays a pivotal role in contemporary EU measures to combat crime. To this end, it critically reviews the four pillars of EU institutional intervention to address the terrorist threat under its European Agenda on Security, and in particular (a) the harmonization of the definition of terrorist offenses, (b) the collection and exchange of information for the facilitation of the prevention and repression of terrorism, (c) the obstruction of its funding, and (d) the cooperation with other countries for preventing terrorism. These pillars reveal the widespread collection and exchange of information as a principal tool of vital significance for countering terrorism as well as the ensuing challenges for protecting citizens’ personal data. On this basis, the paper sheds light on the existence of an “open” system of mass collection and exchange of data for monitoring terrorism in the EU which poses grave risks for fundamental rights that have to be addressed, and proposes directions for relevant solutions. Last but not least, the paper connects the “added value” of such an open system of mass collection and exchange of data with the detection of persons considered suspects of terrorist offenses in the future. It also links this “added value” to the legitimizing effect that the modification in the concept of a “suspected person” may have for burdensome measures belonging to a gray zone of unspecified sanctions which remain detached from the guarantees of criminal law. These developments call for cautiousness and restoration of the subsidiary role of criminal law.