We have been working for a long time on the arguments that ESRIF had outlined. This is a very short global summary about the matters on the table.

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ESRIF

(by Marco Giaconi, intuslegere.eu President)

1. The Document COM (2007) 511 final, issued by the Commission of the European Communities, as a communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, and focused on the “Public-Private Dialogue in Security Research and Innovation”, is of an overwhelming importance for the Security and Intelligence community, both European and American. It states for the first time, and moreover explicitly, the need for a private and relevant role in the making of the UE security policy. I would like also to add a note for a role for private entities, both industrial and academic, for their new role in intelligence policy.

2. Basically, our UE document claims for a new role for private entities for the whole spectrum of European security but, in our view, lacks of a specific analysis of the new global menaces to UE security. Terrorism, for example, must not, in our opinion, be treated as an issue like crime, illegal immigration, drug trafficking or the like. Terrorism, and specifically jihadist terrorism (not to mention internal terrorist organizazions, like ETA or other now silent groups) is part of a global war waged by some Islamic organizations against Europe, the State of Israel and the United States of America, which must correctly defined as “Jihad”. And is clearly supported by some arab and Islamic countries. Of course, jihadist terrorism is directed against European citizens and UE infrasctructure, but this does not mean that the goal of jihadist terror is to hurt and kill European citizens, but to kill them or disrupt our infrastructures to reach the aim of a global radical Islamic strategy, i.e. to put the entire European political and economic space in a state of “dhimmitude”, a kind of strict dependence of the European geopolitics to the needs and aims of the entire “Ummah”, the global Islamic community. Of course, there are strong relationship, now well known, between terrorism and human trafficking, drug trafficking, and the like. But the goal of jihadist terror is to block European development and regionalise the EU by severing its ties with the USA, while the goal of traffickers and criminals is simply, as always, to make huge and rapid illegal profits.

3. The new security framework envisaged by Document 511 must be defined not only in a multilateral level, but also in a geopolitical environment. To be more specific, the Document presented might, in the near future, define the role of the Private-Public Dialogue on security Research and Innovation also in connection with WEO, the Eurocorps, and firstly with NATO. Remote control for European borders, and especially in the Mediterranean, is a subject inexplicably connected with security and intelligence agencies, and we could imagine also a new intelligence network for UE related to the member states’ agencies which could collect, analyse, verify and disseminate specific remote data for a clever, before-things-happen overview of European borders. In our opinion, there could be envisaged, in the next related documents, a bottom-up link between ESRIF, its projects and the SATNEXT and ESA activities.

4. Infrastructure protection is correctly underlined as one of the main aims of ESRIF. This may need, in the near future, the definition of a common UE policy on this issue, as the one envisaged in Document EPCIP as stated in Memo /06/477. The basic fact is that terrorism usually doesn’t show where it hits before. So, it could be possible a critical infrastructure protection (but we must name what’s critical and what’s not) where there is a basic roundabout protection (and possibly, the protection of the energy and oil vectors) and a group of UE experts where critical, ad hoc programmes are thought and implemented.

5. This is the task, among others, of the ESRIF Crisis management as stated at p. 4 of UE document . We are likely to imagine a Crisis Group ESRIF where data are collected from different sources and evaluated in terms of relevance, common UE interest, global strategic interest, and effective, rapid and feasible counter-activities. We have experienced, in the last years, an overload of good analysis in the EU area, and a significant lack of pragmatism for EU security programmes.

6. The ESRIF Crisis Management group should, in our view, have a stable link with the Crisis management Groups in the EU Countries, show determination in tracing an effective line of command in UE hierarchy, and set a track of communication with NATO and G-8 security Groups. We could also imagine a strong implementation of IT techniques for remote control coming from the private sector; and integrated in the ESA and aven in ESPRIT and CORDIS EU programmes.

7. Security on the borders means good intelligence at home. When a terror and/or crime agent enters the EU area, is always too late. A security cell in the ESRIF structure is needed. Moreover, the “restoring security and safety in a crisis” means, as in many crisis spots in the last years, to coordinate military, psychological, economical, managerial, and local police operations which cannot be separated in advance. And, finally, “intelligence” doesn’t always mean border security and the simple protection of citizens. It means, usually, an insight in the strategies, operations, political presences, cultural dominance, economic directions of the groups and networks operating in EU critical areas that doesn’t relate to the “freedoms” of citizens, but with the complex behaviour of groups, either legal or criminal. A set in ESRIF for “political management” could not be useless.

FRAMEWORK

(by Giovanni Nacci , Intuslegere Director & Founder)

1. Designing and implementing an organizational and techno-informative framework really functional to the idea of “Public-Private Dialogue in Security Research and Innovation” (as said by the European Commission COM(2007)511 document) is strategically very relevant to reach the final objectives that the same document proposes.

2. Security is neither a private matter of a single nation anymore nor an internal national business but involves every social level: economical and cultural operators, schools and universities and economic infrastructures. Every actor – in accordance to its capabilities and within its sphere and field of action – must contribute to reach that condition of social peace where every other right of freedom and security can be expressed. We hope that this will happen in Europe and a starting project for public and private dialogue is a preparatory and crucial stage to a more concrete and incisive common policy for security based on unity of intents, strategic purposes and operating plans.

3. Security, besides being a fundamental right, is an inalienable condition for the competitiveness and the social-economic and cultural growth of nations and organizations. Like other resources (energy for example) security is a strategic good that can not be stored to be used as needed. It must be created and spread just in time as much as needed in different types.

4. Security, like energy, is the result of the common working of a competing network of resources committed to reach the same goal. The same way energy systems of nations are interconnected each other exchanging given energy, the security of a community can be considered like a converging network of actions, knowledge and experiences but of methods, systems and technologies too.

5. We said that the security of a transnational community is based on the quality of the intelligence produced by single member nations. But a concrete action of strategic coordination at a central level is needed to direct single intelligence efforts towards the attainment of a common aim. Our proposal is to create an European intelligence network organized on a central level in a Crisis Management Group (CMG) connected to a network of National Control Centers (NCC), one for every single member nation.

6. On a central level CMG tasks, besides others, would be:

   1. To identify a common strategic and informative policy about security;

   2. To give instructions dealing with the coordination between the various informative and operative activities created in reply to the critical situations identified from time to time;

   3. To analyze and evaluate the information continuously created by the network of the National Control Centers (NCC).

   4. To create a complete, anticipatory and situational intelligence easy to use at the right moment by the EU;

   5. To create a direct and equal interface with the other security resources in existence within the EU and NATO sphere;

7. On a national level NCC tasks, besides others, would be:

   1. To design and implement – following an OSINT model – a secure network of stakeholders’ sources (governments and non-governmental organizations, business and cultural operators, think tanks, civil societies, etc) identified in the most important divisions for the security of member nations like energy, telecommunication, critical infrastructures, healthcare, financial services, etc;

   2. on a territorial level to create a good exchange of views between public and private about security through the creation of thematic forums according to ESRIF directives and the creation of team works specialized in innovative security projects;

   3. To improve – even through social networking media – the knowledge (specialized and general) expressed by the interaction of experts within the networks;

   4. To make a continual analysis of the information and alerts that derive from the territory and from the network sharing its results on a central level with the Crisis Management Group.

8. To guarantee a high level of action to the network and its capacity to shape itself to the variation of the strategic contests, every single territorial unit is self-governing (it defines its own internal coordination processes) but manages processes that produce information and communicate (inbound, outbound) among other unit in a very structured way. So top priority actions would be:

   1. To implement a physical widespread carrier to communicate safely;

   2. To standardize common organizational languages – through the use of ontology as a mean of coordination of the organizations – achieving a univocal representation of common knowledge and experiences;

   3. To implement an informative standard interface to help the access, the creation and management of a common knowledge;

   4. To use technological means on a large scale to achieve the analysis and the automatic classification of information (text mining/data mining) as much a “language independent” platform as a representation and interrogation of knowledge.