Strengthening Cross-border Law Enforcement Cooperation: the Prüm Network of Information Exchange

The Prüm network was established to provide mechanisms and the infrastructure to achieve a closer cooperation between the EU member states in combating terrorism, organised crime and illegal immigration through the cross border exchange of DNA profiles, fingerprints and vehicle registration data. While Prüm offers clear benefits for cross-border policing, it continues to present challenges of a technical and scientific nature as well as legal, ethical and socioeconomic concerns. This article reviews these challenges as well as the existing safeguards. It argues that, in order to achieve Prüm benefits and maximise its potential, it is important to enhance the necessary dialogue and cooperation between member states so as to confront the above concerns and address challenges posed by Prüm through balanced measures

The algorithmic regulation of security: An infrastructural perspective

This article contributes to debates on algorithmic regulation by focusing on the domain of security. It develops an infrastructural perspective, by analyzing how algorithmic regulation is enacted through the custom‐built transatlantic data infrastructures of the EU‐U.S. Passenger Name Records and Terrorism Financing Tracking Program programs. Concerning regulation through algorithms, this approach analyzes how specific, commercial data are rendered transferable and meaningful in a security context. Concerning the regulation of algorithms, an infrastructural perspective examines how public values like privacy and accountability are built into international data infrastructures. The creation of data infrastructures affects existing modes of governance and fosters novel power relations among public and private actors. We highlight emergent modes of standard setting, thus enriching Yeung's (2018) taxonomy, and question the practical effects of operationalizing public values through infrastructural choices. Ultimately, the article offers a critical reading of algorithmic security, and how it materially, legally, and politically supports specific ways of doing security