Frontex has been collecting personal data from migrants since 2016 through covert interrogations lacking legal safeguards. The agency unlawfully transmitted data of over 13,000 individuals to Europol, where it was stored in criminal intelligence files for police investigations. An investigation reveals the involvement of Frontex and Europol in legally questionable practices, leading to the criminalization of migrants and human rights activists. Due to findings from an independent EU body, Frontex was forced to amend its data transfer protocols, deemed illegal for violating privacy rights of individuals.
My whole life was in that police file: my relatives, my calls to my mother, even false details about my sex life. They wanted to portray me as a promiscuous lesbian, using morality to make me look suspicious, says Helena Maleno, 54, a Spanish human rights activist.
An investigation by Le Monde, Solomon a non-profit based in Greece and EL PAIS based on hundreds of pages of internal documents and interviews with data protection experts reveals the involvement of Frontex and Europol in opaque and legally questionable practices.
Between 2016 and 2023, the agency illegally transferred the data of more than 13,000 people to the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), where the data was stored in criminal intelligence files for use in EU police investigations.
The border agency was forced to change its data transfer protocols following a report by an independent EU body that deemed these practices to be unlawful.
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