WRITTEN QUESTION E-1084/01

by Bart Staes (Verts/ALE) to the Commission

(6 April 2001)

Subject: The Sensus project: the European equivalent of DARPA

The Sensus project, the successor to Aventinus, seeks to develop an information exchange programme for European police and intelligence services by analogy with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Coordination of Sensus is in the hands of Stephan Bodenkamp/Christoph Kionowski, a secret agent of the Bundesnachrichtendienst. DARPA, a government body, coordinates the research and development programmes of the American Department of Defense.

Two language technology laboratories appear to play a crucial role in DARPA and the Sensus project. Dragon has developed translation technology for US intelligence services and it has cooperated in the Multilingual Interview System (MIS). This system was intended for automatic translation of Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian interviews in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Spring 1998) and of Arabic, Farsi, Hindi and Urdu in the Persian Gulf (Summer 1998). Via its subsidiary Sail Labs, formerly Gesellschaft für Multilingual Systeme mbH, Lernout & Haspie (L & H) was closely involved in the European Sensus project. To complete the picture it should be pointed out that L & H took party in DARPA's Dominate the Battlespace project in 1997.

Inspired by the MIS success of its rival Dragon, L & H has set up a number of so-called Language Development Companies to develop language technology in Hindi, Farsi, Arabic and Urdu. Stephan Bodenkamp/Christoph Kionowski, secret agent of the Bundesnachrichtendienst and coordinator of the Sensus project, set up three Language Development Companies. In early 2000 L & H took over Dragon. The US National Security Agency was strongly opposed to this take-over because of the strategic and sensitive technology which came into the possession of the European group.

1. What activities has L & H carried out under the Sensus project?

2. What activities has L & H's subsidiary Sail Labs carried out under the Sensus project?

3. What activities have the three Language Development Companies set up by Stephan Bodenkamp/Christoph Kionowski, carried out under the Sensus project?

4. What activities has L & H's subsidiary Dragon carried out under the Sensus project?

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission

(1 August 2001)

In his question the Honourable Member compares the Sensus project with DARPA. This is not a valid comparison. Sensus is a single project with Community funding of 2,25 million, only one of many cost-shared R & D projects of the Fourth framework programme for Research and Technological Development of the Community. The Fourth framework programme funds projects addressing a diverse range of topics such as biotechnology, transport and energy. DARPA on the other hand is a US government body co-ordinating R & D programmes of the Department of Defense.

Gesellschaft für multilinguale Systeme mbH, (GMS) were involved as partner in the Sensus project during the definition phase which lasted until late 1998. They were responsible for the work package entitled Technology Review, which included determining which tools necessary for Sensus already existed and on what terms and conditions they could be obtained for the project.

GMS became Lernout & Hauspie (L & H) Sprachtechnologie GmbH and was involved in Sensus until May 1999, when they handed over their role and responsibilities to Sail Labs GmbH.

Sail Labs were responsible for two Linguistic Tools work packages (Linguistic Tools for Input Scenario and Linguistic Tools for Information Processing). The first work package concerned the provision of language technology tools, based on components from the Aventinus project and included extending the coverage of these tools to the Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch languages as well as computer aided translation (using term substitution, translation memory and machine translation) and indexing and classification components. The second work package dealt with multilingual and multi-modal processing. Sail Labs were assisted in these tasks by several associate contractors, including well-respected universities and language technology institutes.

Neither the three L & H Language Development Companies nor other L & H companies were involved in the Sensus project.

Mr Bodenkamp has declared (both to the Commission and to the German and international press) that his involvement with three L & H start-ups was as one of the original shareholders - holding 10 of 278 000 shares worth about 210 in each of the three start-ups - and honorary technical director. He reportedly sold his shares as early as November 1999.

L & H Dragon was not involved in the Sensus project.