WRITTEN QUESTION E-1084/01 by Bart Staes (Verts/ALE) to the Commission. The Sensus project: the European equivalent of DARPA.
Date: 2001-04-06
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: EU police cooperation, Germany, United States, linguistics, research project, secret service

20.12.2001

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 364 E/43

Does the Commission acknowledge that the dual role of the Sensus coordinator leads to a blurring of
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interests between the public and the (cid:145)private(cid:146) sector (in this case the Bundesnachrichtendienst)? If not, what
guarantees does the Commission have that the set-up referred to above has not resulted in this blurring?

Does the Commission acknowledge that the dual role of the Sensus coordinator has led to an
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imbalance in the language technology know-how of the various police and security services, in particular
in favour of the Bundesnachrichtendienst? If not, what guarantees does the Commission have that the set-
up referred to above has not resulted in this imbalance?

Does the Commission acknowledge that the dual role of the Sensus coordinator has led to unfair
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competition between those language technology firms which are involved in Sensus and those which are
not? If not, what guarantees does the Commission have that the set-up referred to above has not resulted
in unfair competition?

(1) OJ C 187 E, 3.7.2001, p. 154.

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission

(1 August 2001)

The Sensus project includes several public and private organisations, including police forces and
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security agencies. The list of participants is consistent with the objectives of the project in developing pre-
competitive technology to combat organised crime.

The Commission does not consider that there has been an improper imbalance in the availability of

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language technology to police forces, in favour of those who participated in Sensus.

The involvement of Europol and the presence in the consortium of a user group of police forces across
Europe ensured that the project did not favour any specific objectives of any individual participant.
Consistent with the open nature of the project, its objectives and the fact that the results have been widely
presented to many police forces and at relevant fairs and exhibitions.

As the Sensus project is concerned with the development of pre-competitive technology, there would

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not seem to be any grounds for alleging the occurrence of any unfair competition in this regard.

(2001/C 364 E/048)

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 f(cid:252)r 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(cid:146)s (cid:145)Dominate the Battlespace(cid:146) project in
1997.

C 364 E/44

Official Journal of the European Communities

EN

20.12.2001

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(cid:146)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(cid:146)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 f(cid:252)r 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
(cid:145)Technology Review(cid:146), 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 ((cid:145)Linguistic Tools for Input Scenario(cid:146) and
(cid:145)Linguistic Tools for Information Processing(cid:146)). 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 (cid:129) holding 10 of 278 000
shares worth about € 210 in each of the three start-ups (cid:129) and honorary technical director. He reportedly
sold his shares as early as November 1999.

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