BRUSSELS — New powers proposed for the EU's border police Frontex to monitor social media pose a threat to free speech, European lawmakers and civil society groups have told POLITICO. The EU Commission's proposal Tuesday for a major revamp of the coast and border patrol agency included a broad and explicit mandate to monitor social media for information that aids or encourages illegal border crossings into the European Union. Social democratic Italian lawmaker Brando Benifei told POLITICO it was "legitimate" for authorities to remove online advertisements for human smuggling: "But a broad social media surveillance mandate goes much further, placing online speech under a border agency’s watch.” After a 2019 monitoring tender with similar powers was revoked over criticism about privacy violations, Benifei said "the Commission now proposes copying ICE’s invasive online tracking,” referencing the much-criticized surveillance tactics of the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Under the EU proposal, Frontex would set up an internal structure to monitor social media and report to the platform in question the content it says is facilitating illegal entry to EU countries. This comes as the Commission is seeking to double the agency's budget for the next seven years and vastly expand its powers to deport people.
The EU already has several structures that facilitate the exchange of information between civil society, social media platforms and authorities when it comes to disinformation campaigns or illegal content. These include a rapid response system on disinformation campaigns under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU's landmark law regulating digital platforms, as well as a recently established democratic resilience center. Brussels must tread a careful balance not to police individual pieces of content, especially given criticism from civil society activists that it is trying to become the arbiter of truth online.
The legality of content is set by countries, which assign their authorities or civil society to monitor the platforms for problematic postings to be flagged to the platforms to be taken down. Frontex would apply for trusted flagger status under the DSA, which gives priority to the content it flags to social media platforms. Entities that apply for this status have to demonstrate expertise and independence to a national authority, which grants them special status.
The Commission's initial communication suggested Frontex "will be acting" as such an entity, which EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen later clarified meant they would apply for it. That application would have to be reviewed by a national authority to check Frontex's independence and expertise in that area. Polish right-wing MEP Piotr Müller told POLITICO that the "mandate must be precise" in focusing on criminal networks.
Executive Vice President Virkkunen announced the news at a meeting Tuesday of signatories of the DSA’s code of conduct on disinformation, some of whom are trusted flaggers. Questions around the implications of the measures for freedom of speech and assembly came up in the closed-door meeting. According to two attendees, Renate Nikolay, deputy director general of DG CONNECT, the Commission's tech department, tried to assuage the free-speech concerns.
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