Focus on technology of abuse

Date: 20/02/1997

THE increasing trend for technological advances to be used to devise new instruments of torture and crowd restraint makes it imperative that stronger political and legal controls should be established, says an authoritative report being prepared for MEPs.

The study, which has been commissioned by the European Parliament's civil liberties committee, paints a graphic picture of the frightening range of technologically advanced items now available to unscrupulous national authorities.

It provides details of technological breakthroughs which enable a whole society to be placed under surveillance, destroying the right to privacy. It also highlights the development of new-style riot tanks, which resemble ambulances and so attract less public attention, and of increasingly sophisticated forms of execution and torture.

“A key goal of this project is to identify a series of policy options which might allow this technology to be brought back within the limits of proper democratic control, at European level,” explained Steve Wright, the author of the interim report.

British Socialist MEP Glyn Ford, a member of the civil liberties committee, is convinced that what is politely termed “the technology of political control” is an area the Parliament can no longer ignore.

“We needed to have an idea of what is available and possible, and to know what can be done with the existing technology. Too often we examine issues on the basis of yesterday's knowledge, not today's, so if we are going to draw up codes of practice, we need to be up-to-date with the facts,” he declared.

The Parliament-sponsored investigation is examining a vast area extending from the use of advanced techniques to monitor an individual's movements and credit payments through to different methods of execution.

The interim report warns that “evidence is emerging of an international trade in some torture technologies through Europe”. It maintains that the possible abuse of modern crowd-control weapons means that “future public protest in Europe could involve a threat of death or serious injury”.

It is also highly critical of the growing practice in member states of privatising prisons and handing their management over to corporate conglomerates. Such a trend, it suggests, could “lead to cost-cutting practices of human warehousing rather than the more long-term beneficial practice of prisoner rehabilitation”.

The final report, which is due to be submitted to the civil liberties committee after Easter, is expected to contain possible options for codes of practice designed to ensure that use of the current innovations remains firmly under democratic control.

“We will need to assess the political implications of this technology for the future and if the committee agrees, we might come forward with our own ideas for codes,” said Ford.