European Police Congress in Berlin

bristol | protests | news report Monday December 17, 2012 11:19 by cophater

In February 2013 the 16th European Police Congress will be held in Berlin. According to the numbers of the responsible organiser, a publishing company for administration issues, around 1.600 participants coming from more than 50 countries attended the last congress in 2012.
Cops, politicians, enterprises and other VIPs meet there once a year to coordinate their interests. While members of the administration get free access, normal journalists and people have to pay around thousand euro for registration. Enterprises with commercial interests pay per square meter for exhibition ground. Well-known brands were present the last years.

For example Taser, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle or t-systems. As international as the exhibitors are the speakers, coming from administrations all over Europe, police-forces from countries as far as Taiwan and from multinational enterprises .

Thus the character of this international event is a mixture of a trade show and a semi-informal meeting. While it’s a much liked place for the marketing of repression hardware like weapons and police gear, the most current concern of the pigs is to gain the ability to handle the enormous loads of data, that have come up in the age of internet and mass-surveillance.

Due to this dilemma, most exhibitors are offering the state systems and frameworks for acquisition and management of information. Additionally, many workshops during the congress deal with these problems, and offer a locale for exchanging experience in this regard.

As in former years, autonomous groups are calling for action around that time. For some years now the Police Congress was an occassion for many people to go to the streets and express their rage against surveillance, control and repression. Not only demonstrations but also physical attacks against police infrastructure have accompanied the last years meetings. Though far from chasing the police out of the city, it is planned to raise the resistance level by level. A demonstration is announced for the 23rd of February.

Fore more informations check: http://polizeikongress2013.blogsport.de/

Mobivideo for the last year:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcE9w-Tf3TY

Cops try to get into a squat after the demonstration against the policecongress 2012:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL-OsrdCwCM