In September 2019, Frontex, the EU's border control agency publishing a tender, inviting surveillance companies to bid for a $400,000 project to track people on social media.
But why stop short at spying on migrants themselves? In addition to gathering “data and analysis of relevant actors using social media: migrants; traffickers/smugglers”, Frontex also wanted to monitor “civil society and diaspora communities in destinations (EU).”
At this stage, NGOs such as Statewatch and journalists at Mediapart had noticed the tender, leading to Frontex having to defend the project by claiming, to the bemusement of some of Privacy International’s data protection experts, that “the required service does not entail collecting, processing, sharing or storing of any personal data by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency”.
So with that in mind, Privacy International set up an account on the procurement website, and asked them some pretty detailed questions to find out how they came to the conclusions they did, and if they had gone through the necessary checks to make sure their plan was legal. These questions were based on a single legal instrument, Regulation 2018/1725, which is the equivalent of the GDPR for EU institutions and is thus meant to regulate how EU bodies like Frontex process personal data.

Similar to other questions, the agency would have had to publish the answers on the tender site.
Two days later however, they mysteriously cancelled the contract while still facing questions as to whether such spying was even allowed under data protection regulations.

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