On "Smykkeloven": The Danish Policy to Seize Personal Valuables and Money from Asylum Seekers

I suppose no one has missed the fast and radical transformation of European refugee and migration policy, following both the vast increase of refugees wishing to seek asylum in European countries during 2015, and the ongoing tragedy of people being killed while attempting to cross the the borders into the European fortress. In my earlier post on this, the focus has been on what occurs around the EU external borders and the inability of the EU to decide and enact a joint policy of sharing asylum seekers to defuse the problem. However, the transformations during the last year includes some rather drastic measures also inside EU itself. Not least by my own government, which has re-installed internal border controls between Sweden and Denmark, Germany, Poland, and so on, and the issuing of a transporter accountability legislation, leading to ID-controls akin those already routine at airports also at ports, train stations, etc. in Denmark and Germany. The Swedish turn-around rather quickly gave rise to a domino effect southwards within the EU, and quick changes of policy have occurred in Denmark, and are being announced in Germany as well. I predict that very soon we will be back at square one were we where when the horrific news of the mass deaths in the Mediterranean started to gain attention a few years back.

One of these changes, that have attracted a lot of negative attention, is the Danish so-called smykkelov; a statute prescribing Danish border police to seize and secure money and valuable assets (such as electronic equipment or jewelry), of asylum seekers, moving many people's minds to the well known Nazi-german organised robbery of Jewish assets, including the bending out of dental gold from people's teeth post slaughtering in the death camps. Thus, following the adoption of the law by parliament, The Guardian, published a satirical cartoon depicting the Danish PM, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, shown to the left. And another cartoon comment, published by The Independent, depicts the famous Havsfruen statue in the Copenhagen harbour thus:

As a tragicomical aside, these two pieces enraged the former leader of the Danish foremost anti-immigration party, now speaker of the parliament, Pia Kjeaersgaard – otherwise known as one the most fierce defenders of freedom of expression related to debates around the so-called Mohammed cartoons of Jyllandsposten – so that she publicly said they are "not fair" and that the newspapers would "have to withdraw them". And Swedish television aired a report on this, where also "ordinary danes" on the streets of Copenhagen exhibited similar crocodile tears when faced with the bitter taste of their own medicine.

Leaving such pathetic expressions of Danish nationalist hypocricy, however, a more serious accusation of possible hypocritical or double standard thinking has been wielded against those who criticise the Danish law. This since, first, apparently, most countries have various sorts of policies meaning that asylum seekers can be made to pay for things like housing, food, schooling of children, etc. during the trial of their application for asylum. This includes, for instance, Switzerland and, indeed, Sweden. Second, Danish politicians have argued that the Smykkelov is merely a case of applying a principle of equal treatment, as Danish residents (as the residents of most countries) are as a rule required to see to their own financial needs, and may only receive public welfare support when these have run out. I found these arguments interesting, as they basically rest on one sound idea: that there is no principal difference between residents and non-residents of a country. So let's have a closer look at how this way of looking at the issue relates to the Danish law.

1. Let's for starters leave out the option of challenging the principle that people should not receive public welfare support until their private assets have run out. Not because it cannot be challenged, it can for instance be argued that it is pragmatically stupid and inefficient, as it tends to lock people into dependency on public welfare. But only for the sake of the argument, let's leave that discussion to a side for now.

2. Let's also leave out the discussion whether or not it is OK for public agencies to demand payment for the processing of a request for what is a legal right (say applying for a tax subsidy, or requesting help by the police)). I would personally like to quarrel with that notion, but for the sake of argument, let's leave also this issue uncontested.

3. Let's then compare the policies of the mentioned examples, Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden.

• In the Swedish case, the policy in question regards the daily welfare allowance that an asylum seeker may receive while waiting for a decision on asylum and is described here. In short, it means that in order to receive allowance, you have to demonstrate need, and that includes declaring your assets of economic value. If these are found to be sufficient, no allowance will be granted and the person in question will have to pay their own way. Included in this assessment is also an assessment regarding the need to provide housing, whether or not that should be covered by the allowance, etc. There is in this case also a right to appeal the decision. Of course, if someone lies or cheats in this process, this person acts illegally and can be penalised accordingly.  This makes the conditions of asylum seekers almost exactly on a par with Swedish residents applying for public welfare support, and thus in full compliance with the principle of equal treatment referred to in the Danish discussion.
• In Switzerland, as reported in the news (here, here, here), the procedure is rather different. In this case, the system is that asylum seekers are required to "hand over" all money exceeding 1000 Swiss francs to the authorities, as a sort of security for the costs of the Swiss state for assessing their application for asylum and providing upkeep, and that these money are repaid to any asylum seeker deciding to abolish the process within 7 months. Thus, there is no active "search and seizure" by police, but a legal obligation (and I assume the asylum seeker can be penalised for breeches of it) where the individual is left to decide how to take this responsibility, and – in addition – the valuables are not necessarily lost, but within the 7 month window function more as a deposition. At the same time, the level of viewing asylum seekers as responsible people just like anybody else is slightly less than in the Swedish case, as the handover is obligatory and the valuables then managed by the state. Thus, asylum seekers are not treated as anyone else, as I doubt that Swiss policy for residents is that these have a legal obligation to give almost all their money to the state, so that the state can then pay their bills. Or, if that is preferred, it is handed over to be kept by the landlord, the telephone company, the electricty provider, the supermarket on the corner, and so on.
• The Danish case, as I have understood the now decided policy (see links above), moves rather more far away from the idea of asylum seekers as actual people, even remotely on a par with residents of the country. Here the idea is exactly "search and seizure" – as I understand at the discretion of individual police officers and with no legally secured opportunity to get anything back, legal appeal, etc. Basically, the border policy is to take from you what you have if you apply for asylum, and then its gone; what we otherwise like to call robbery. I'm quite sure that this is not how residents' need to pay their way in various instances of Danish life is handled by the Danish state – if that were so, knowing quite a bit of Danish people, I think I'd heard about it by now. My impression is that this civic duty (which we accept for the sake of argument) is handled in Denmark as everywhere else: you receive a notification of payment, that can be challenged and for which you may apply for public support to handle, which you then are left to take responsibility for yourself, and if you don't take it you suffer the consequences. This basically also applies to taxes, although it's a bit of a complex process that proceeds via revenue, appeals, applications for subsidies, etc. The Danish resident is viewed as a person capable of taking responsibility for his or her own actions, with a basic right to dispose of his or her assets as she pleases (within what is lawful) and accountable for the ensuing upshots of his or her decisions. That is, the argument from equal treatment seems very far from supporting anything even remotely resembling the Smykkelov.

So how would the treatment of Danish residents have to look like for the Smykkelov to be supported by the appeal to equal treatment? I suppose something like this:

• At the end of every month, the police scans you bank account and transfers all of the money there to a state account, used to pay for your rent, your food, your clothes, etc.

• In this period, the police also breaks into your home and seizes all valuable assets for the same purpose.

• In addition, there is the regularly seizure of tax for public services, but now at the discretion of individual police officers and no legal room for appeal, etc. 

So now, we all wait for this apparently generally desired reformation of danish civic life. As the title of the danish national anthem goes:

Der er et yndigt land!

Addendum Re. Using Medical Methods to Determine the Age of Unaccompanied Refugee Children

After my post on this issue a few days ago, I've debated the issue with a number of people from within medicine and also bioethics in different fora.

Due to the presence of significant uncertainties of the methods debated, my suggestion was that use of this methods should be amended by the following methodological rule (assuming 18 to be the age of adulthood, if it is different we may simply insert another variable for that):

... for any method, M, for the assessment of the age of a person, P, with a margin of error +/- X years, M is taken to indicate adulthood if, and only if, its result is 18+X years or higher, and otherwise taken to indicate childhood

Here are a few points that may be added to the complexities of this particular issue:

1. The nature of the uncertanties
Some have argued to me that the methods are not only uncertain in a way possible to describe in terms of a margin of error. One reason for this put to me is that besides the usual margin of error within the dimension of a variable, there is also the background confidence interval behind this margin, and the known effect of having this confidence deteriorate considerably when aggregated population probabilities are projected onto individual cases. I, of course, do not deny that there is also this source of uncertainty, but as far as I can see, my formula above can easily include that: X can be the aggregation of both these uncertainties (this was my original thought as well). This probably means that X becomes considerably larger than 4 (the number used in the example in the original post, based on claims by critics of the model). However, this in no way undermines my suggestion, as this will probably mean that all unaccompanied refugee children will most likely be determined to be children (and, if there are any people like that, in addition a number of refugee adults who falsely claim to be children). That is, the best interest of children, as well as the proper priority of legal provisions is upheld. Suppose, for instance, that the margin of error, accounting for all sources of uncertainty, becomes +/- 15 years. Then my rule says that P is to be considered an adult if, and only if, M finds P to be 33 years or more.

Another claim has been that some of the methods depend on the existence of relevant tables and charts or background data, and that such are missing in this case, meaning that the methods are not really uncertain, there is no method at all. The bewildering thing is that the same people are at the same time officially repeating the argument that the methods are uncertain and have unacceptably wide margins of error. These two claims are, of course, inconsistent; if it's not possible to have any result at all, there is no margin of error, and if there is a margin of error there is some results that create this margin. If it turns out that, in fact, the variable X (accounting for all kinds of sources of uncertainty), cannot be given any empirically based numerical estimate, I concede that my rule is inapplicable. However, if even an interval numerical estimate can be grounded, my rule can be used, by simply adding (supported by the same basic principles as before) that, the high extreme of this interval should be used to define X (in order to err in the right direction). Again, this may mean that the method will determine all tested as children, but, as already argued, it is difficult to see what the ethical or legal problem with that would be.

2. Professional Health Care Ethics and Ethics
Another aspect that has been raised is the fact that my suggestions means that health care professionals pragmatically accommodate to flawed public policies in the best interest of concerned parties (i.e. the children). This is wrong, some say, health care professionals should demand to regulate themselves and never do anything they themselves collegially don't find suitable to do, not even if this is harming third parties. Some have even gone so far at to claim that it is irresponsible of a health care professional to ever act the slightest in any other interest than his or her patient's.

The latter would, of course, mean that we would have to abandon all public health practices, communicable disease management, forensic medicine, large segments of insurance and sports medicine, and not least the involvement of doctors in issuing certificates underlying decisions by public authorities, such as sick leave or work-related disability benefits, and so on. Since health care professional organisations have as yet made no move whatsoever in such directions, I trust that this is not the line underlying the criticism in the present case. In other words, formalised professional health care ethics already accepts a number of cases where medical methods are used to other ends than the best interest of patients and many of these uses are being pragmatically accommodated to still make the best out of an imperfect thing. A very clear illustration is the assessment of "ability to work" nowadays made routinely by medical doctors in many countries, strategically adapted not to harm their patients while still abiding by required formalities.

It is thus unclear to what extent the principle of never doing anything to right the wrongs of public policies is a part of professional health care ethics. Even more unclear is if, had it been such a part, it would have been ethically defensible. To illustrate with the issue at hand, suppose that the health care professional community was to refuse to participate in the practice decided by the Swedish government. This may have three outcomes: (a) the government and parliament creates a legal room for some other class of officials to use the methods (not using my rule), (b) no method is used, (c) alternative suggested methods based on psychological models are used.

• If (c) is the outcome, the issue reappears, as also these methods can be expected to have margins of error, sources of uncertainty and so on. Then my rule can be used to secure that determinations err in the right direction.

• If (a) is the outcome, the results for the persons concerned, namely the children, is worse than if the profession had chosen to participate, using my rule to secure that they act solely in the best interest of the children, although also accommodating societal requests.

• If (b) is the outcome, the situation stands that unaccompanied refugee children where there is uncertainty as to whether or not they are children, will not be given their rights as children.

Now, compare this with (d): health professionals decide to pragmatically accommodate, and use the methods, amended by my rule.

• If (d) is the outcome, the concerned children's interests and Sweden's legal needs are better served than if any of (a) and (b). If these children are seen as patients, it would then be in their best interest to go for (d) rather than (a) or (b). If there is an option (c), this is even better, provided that my rule is used, but if not it may be better for the patients to go for (d).

3. The Ethics of Clean Hands, Politics of Power and Professional Integrity as Strategic Tool
Against this form of reasoning, some debaters I've talked to have claimed that the downsides for refugee children of the options (a) and (b) (as well as (c) without my rule) cannot be laid at the door of health professionals, but is the sole moral responsibility of the government. That is, they apply the standard of an "ethics of clean hands", denouncing responsibility for bad outcomes they could have avoided by acting differently just because the same is true of some other acting party (here, the government). This is like when the car driver, displeased with the rule that gives pedestrians priority at crosswalks, blames the government while electing to run people over, who cross motivated by the rule. Not very splendid ethics, I'd say.

Another version of this reasoning instead comes in the form of a political power bidding in the name of professional autonomy. It is simply the claim that health professionals should insist on the right to decide for themselves what standards they act on. While this is understandable (we all would like the privilege not to give a damn about the opinions of others, don't we?), it either comes without any underlying defense, or is compatible with sometimes choosing to compromise with other parts, interests and powers in society. As mentioned, the latter seems what in fact is happening in a number of areas, so then the question moves to what reasons pro or contra are present in the area at hand. Here, I have argued that (d) is the superior position.

The same outcome seems to ensue when analysing a final (and, to my view, better) variant of this sort of argument. Instead of an empty insistence on professional autonomy at all cost, this argument points to the political importance of professional integrity as a strategic tool in certain areas. The most obvious of these are torture, capital punishment and military interrogation. Here, the profession has adopted zero tolerance policies, which are thought to have an accumulated preventive effect, as these practices in various ways "need" the participation of doctors. However, this point does not demonstrate that age determination of unaccompanied refugee children belongs to this set of absolutely prohibited practices. As those who criticise the presently proposed methods also say that they could accept methods with a better degree of precision and exactness, it doesn't seem that they are trying to argue this in the present case. Which is understandable, as that would mean arguing against any claim to special considerations of the interests and rights of children.

In sum, therefore, unless it is demonstrated that there is no method at all that could produce any sort of empirically grounded numerical estimate (even in the form of a wide interval) in this area, my suggestion holds up to scrutiny. In fact, it is better supported by both professional health care ethics and more general ethical analysis, than alternative suggestions.

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On Using Physiological or Biomedical Methods to Determine the Age of Unaccompanied Refugee Children

  In my country, there has for some time been a lot of political debate around how to handle the rising number of refugees from, primarily, Syria/Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa. This as the pressure on border EU member states, and the impossible situation of trying to hold back people on the run from intolerable circumstances that I blogged about not so far ago, has meant that much more people are now entering Sweden to seek asylum in a short time, as most other member states are unwilling to participate in a scheme of sharing the economic and logistical load it means to process these requests in a way required by human rights and international agreements, as well as legal security. For, while there is no such thing as a right to have asylum, to seek it is an absolute international legal right, and already this means that a receiving country has a lot of obligations. And one group of refugee people towards which such obligations are especially strict are unaccompanied children, and many of these who actually arrive to Sweden are mostly in their teens, usually lacking certifiable identity documentation.

Now, yesterday, the Swedish government, pressed by the logistic and organisational pressure, declared that the already announced difficulties had now become intolerable, and that a number of measures was to be put into place to complement the already a few weeks back instigated active border controls (which, until then, had been non-existent in accordance with the so-called Schengen accord on free internal EU mobility). The move is very controversial, and many doubt that the logistical and organisational reasons cited are the only ones behind it, if nothing else, worries about how political opinion will shift in the presence of my country's anti-immigration, semi-racist party, the Sweden Democrats (see here, here and here), are bound to have played a part, as these are presently laying mostly low to wait things out after some botched attempts to take the initiative, and being actively ignored by the other parties, as it has announced that its only idea is to close the borders entirely. One thing is entirely clear, though, the problem behind the decision is neither one of money, nor one of space, Sweden has plenty and plenty of both of those, and neith is it about "volumes", as the term goes, but mostly about flow; not how many people arrive, but how many arrive in a short time.

 One of the measures decreed by the Government concerns the unaccompanied refugee children, and it is to (re)start using certain physiological or biomedical methods to ascertain the age of these children. No one is debating the need for such ascertaining, but the debate is about this particular proposal, as many Swedish medical specialists (for two international sources, see here and here) also the medical research specialist organisation Swedish Society of Medicine, point out that the proposed methods are very uncertain and have wide margins of error, up to 4 years plus or minus. This means that the risk is imminent that a child of 14 is determined to be an adult, and that Sweden would thus knowingly risk to default on its particularly strong and demanding obligations towards children. The fact that there is also a risk that some 21-year olds come to enjoy these special protections and care is a non-issue in that light. However, the government seems insistent, so what should be done? General refusal of doctors and other medical staff to participate in what has been proved to be unprofessional practice? (as they would seem to be required to do by the Swedish health and Medical Services Act)? This is certainly a live option from a medical ethical standpoint as well, although it also means that most unaccompanied refugee children are left without proof of age.

However, there is another solution, which would satisfy both the government's decree, the worries from the point of view, the need for unaccompanied refugee children to have their age ascertained, and the overwhelming reason to have Swedish policy abide by its own legal standards. This solution is, moreover, applicable to any method for this purpose. It rests on the assumption that for Sweden to meet its own legal requirements is a primary consideration that trumps other reasons and interests in this area. This means that overestimating a refugee child's age and assess this person as adult is far worse than underestimating a refugee adult's age and assess this person as a child. Based on this premise, we may now argue that, therefore, using a method for age assessment in this area that is uncertain, we should use it in a way that makes us err in the right direction. That is, to the extent that we draw faulty conclusions, these should rather be the wrongful classification of adults as children than the wrongful classification of children as adults. this rules gives us access to a simple mathematical solution to the conundrum: we simply adjust the conclusions drawn with the help of the method in light of its uncertainties, so that we are certain to err in the right direction. Thus, for any method, M, for the assessment of the age of a person, P, with a margin of error +/- X years, M is taken to indicate adulthood if, and only if, its result is 18+X years or higher, and otherwise taken to indicate childhood. Regarding the methods cited earlier, this would mean that a person who is apparently an unaccompanied refugee child (who lacks reliable documents), is concluded to be a child, as long as these methods do not declare the age to be 22 years or higher.

As said, this solution makes it possible to abide by the governmental decision, while acting inside medical professional and ethical boundaries, and while both securing the need of refugee children to have their age determined to claim their rights, and the paramount need for the state of Sweden to honour its own legal and international obligations.

Due to debates related to this post in other fora, here's an addendum I made a few days later.

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What Is A Terrorist Threat, And How Should One Respond To It?

The other day, following the recent horrid events in Paris, linked to several temporally closely aligned similar attacks by Daesh, e.g., in Lebanon and Iraq, apparent intelligence on several other planned attacks throughout Europe, and specifically that a possible Daesh operative had entered Sweden to organise a large.scale attack of some sort, my country raised its official terrorist threat level from 3 to 4 on a scale that ends at 5. One named suspect of preparation of terrorist crime has now been apprehended, but the police and security organs apparently continue to search for others, and the government has been clear that this single factor will not by itself motivate downgrading the threat level. At the same time, several voices criticise the development either for coming much too late (claiming, among other things, that the knowledge of the presence of Daesh sympathisers in the country should have been enough), or for being misdirected, as actual terror attacks in Sweden (save one) tend mostly to be domestic extreme right wing nationalist/racist (targetting refugees and street begging EU migrants, people of visibly Muslim or Roma identity or Middle East or African descent, their living quarters, and so on), or is exaggerated and bound to create more problems than what it prevents or fixes. It struck me that many of these reactions seem based on ignoring or fixing on only selected aspects of what is technically known as a risk analysis. For this is basically what the assessment of the level of terrorist threat by a state is about: assessing certain risks and cost of events classified as terrorist attacks, as well as various actions possibly to take in response to various such levels of risk, and to evaluate on that basis what to do.

A disclaimer before I start: the putative facts about the seriousness of typical types of terrorist attacks, and the likelihood of different types of such attacks, are, of course, open to revision in the face of facts – although, as will become clear, less obviously according to what standard of evidence. All of the aspects described are part of the discussion of the ethical basis of environmental and technological risk policy that I undertake in my book The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk.

First, there is the two main dimensions of the concept of risk itself: the probability and harm dimensions. A risk is always the possible (and to some extent likely) occurrence of some type of variably harmful event. In risk analysis, the magnitude of a risk is determined by a combination of these two dimensions, so that a low probability may be balanced by a serious harm-level, and the other way around. Already this simple analytical unpacking points to a factor that may seem to be at work in the reaction to the raised Swedish terror threat level. Some people focus mainly on the likelihood dimension, and then would hesitate to criticise that new evidence and circumstances changes the assessment, or would rather have seen an earlier raised level in view of the actual wave terror attacks in the form of typical "lone wolf" deeds, and thus a concentration on extreme right wing violence rather than its Islamistic sibbling. Others focus instead on the harm dimension, and then lets the demonstrated vastness of the damage of attacks such as the one in Paris dictate the risk assessment, also when the evidence of likelihood is very weak. This may then motivate the position that, knowing that Daesh and similar groups do have had attacks such as the one  in Paris on its theoretical agenda for a long time (and carried out i the Iraq and Syrian theaters). With the notable exception of Anders Behring Breivik, although much more frequent and actually realised rather than merely theoretically imagined, the right-wing extremist deeds, while clearly terrorism in the sense of attempting to spread fear for political purposes through the use of violence against civilians, tend to be more restricted in its consequences than the large scale massacres that have now occurred and known to be on the Daesh agenda.

Second, there is the way in which different such combinations and magnitudes of risk are evaluated, or seen to support various courses of action. Here, a number of additional issues linked to the assessment of the risk magnitude is actualised, namely:

Third, how the constituents of the risk (its probability level and its harm level) are evaluated in terms of how much we should care about it. This gives another way in which we may get a similar output that was just described above, even if all agree of the risk magnitude. This since risks with the same magnitude may still be evaluated differently, e.g. due to being made up of very low probability, or very serious potential harm. here, one may also want to pay attention to the context, such as if one is making the assessment from the position of already being burdened by much risk of different kind. So if the potentially worst terror threat are the least likely, and the most likely ones the least serious (relatively speaking, of course), we may again get differences of opinion of a similar sort, but now more clearly based on differences of values rather than appraisal of fact.

Fourth, how the opportunity costs of different actions in response to a risk assessment are evaluated, that is, what is lost and risked by taking these various actions rather than other ones. Here we may spot a number of ways in which assessments may differ, although not basically disagreeing on the risk assessment (such disagreements may, of course, also be added to other disagreements). For instance, several argued against extensive action in face of the wave of apparently extreme right wing nationalist attacks against Swedish actual or in preparation asylum shelters that it would not be worth the costs it would mean to have effective guarding of each one of them. At the same time, there has been no or very little hesitance to mobilise extensive police and security forces to guard potential targets and just demonstrate the presence of the state organs to effect public calm in the wake of the new threat level. But there has been some criticism, for instance, from one of the country's most prominent terrorist experts, Magnus Norell, who claimed that even if there is a raised threat, the actions in response to it and the very act of public threat level raising itself mostly creates unnecessary worry and fear, that is the very effect aimed for by terrorists. One may also wonder how effective the guarding by police of places like train stations and main squares of large cities are, provided that combatants such as those responsible for the Beirut and Paris attacks are set on targeting them. In both cases, this would also mean that these resources are, in fact, wasted. In that light, posting armed guards outside every asylum shelter to guard against a wholly different kind of terrorists targeting these may suddenly seem as a more effective and less costly measure. This aspect, of course, has many more sides, but this only goes to show how the evaluation of options in response to a described threat, and the opportunity costs attached to them may be used to inject the issue with limitless complexity.

Fifth, there is the issue of the evaluation of evidence, underlying the probability estimates at work in all of the considerations pointed to above Here, we may see a number of differences on what type of evidence is to be given the most credence: Actual similar past events is one model, following the "frequentist" ideal in decision theory. That would, in the present case, probably speak in favour of a much higher probability for more extreme nationalist right wing terrorism against refugees, migrants and their quarters in Sweden, as this is what wa have mostly had in the past (especially the very close past). Another model is to instead trust qualified estimates, by appointed experts, who may then, if they so prefer, let other reasons than frequentist ones affect the probability estimate. For instance, even if there has been no, or relatively very few, attacks of the type known to be on the Al-Qaeda and Daesh agendas, the fact there are such attacks on this agenda combined with the presence of people who sympathise with these movements in the country, and maybe witness statements that some such person in the country has been mentioned to plan or want to plan such an attack, may be used as evidence. Some of that evidence may be broken down into an indirect frequentist argument, as it points to factors believed to have been active in relevantly similar past events elsewhere. But a substantial portion would also seem to be about subscribing to certain qualitative and evaluative assessments, such as choosing to trust certain bearers for information as credible, viewing certain events as relevantly similar in spite of notable dissimilarities, and so on. The point is that the more of this latter sort of probability grounding is used, the more room to assess as probable also events of which there have been no very similar precedent.

Sixth, there is the issue of the how much evidence (given some standard of its quality of the sort just described) should be required for a credible estimate, and for taking action. This factor is basically about how long we should wait and amass evidence to have a more well-founded risk assessment, in view of the potential costs of being to late to act effectively against the threat (if there is any). Also this aspect seems to be at work in the Swedish debate, as those who complain about the threat level not having been raised and associated action taken earlier seem to be prone to care less about the evidence of the threat, and rather have action on looser grounds to be "better safe than sorry", but the of course also downgrade or ignore the opportunity costs of this. Those who require more evidence will, on the other hand, want to wait longer even in the face of potential dangers such as the present ones, and some of these might be content with the balance made by Swedish authorities, while others would find the actions premature and would prefer more evidence to assess the raised level and the linked actions justified.

The idea that, inside this vastly variable complex of factors and possible positions on how to do a risk analysis and act on its results there exists one, simple and self-evident alternative is, of course, utterly ridiculous.

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The Inevitable Endpoint of EU Refugee and Border Policy Spells Genocide

There has been abundant reporting recently on the continuously ongoing exercise in inhumanity that is European Union refugee policy. Alas, the focus is often on singular incident, such as the recent tragedy of the sunken both that had at least 700 die of drowning in the Mediterranean (here, here, here). However, already several month ago, BBC reported that in the course of just a few months last year, over 2 200 people were estimated to have lost their lives due to similar causes in these deadly sea. A more recent report from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is cited by the same source as implicating an expectation of the number of people meeting similar destinies in the Mediterranean alone will reach 30 000 this year (also reported here), and other sources note that the number of refugee deaths in the Mediterranean is already 30 times higher this year compared to the same period in the former. A detailed map of all registered deaths since the year 2000 can be found here.

As dryly noted by well-known public health educator, and my countryman, Hans Rosling in a recent video – rhetorically answering the cynical question why refugees don't fly instead, as this is much cheaper and safer – the primary cause of this development can be located almost entirely in the inhuman border and refugee policies of the European Union and its member states:

 

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True to this essence of European policy in this area, in the 2014, the UK announced that it would cancel all further engagement in missions to rescue victims of capsizing refugee boats, leading to sharp reactions, e.g., from Amnesty International. In a similar spirit, the European Union has reacted to the more recent outcries, with a 10-point plan, most of which is nothing else than just more of business as usual, as noted by, e.g., Human Rights Watch. For the essence of EU border and refugee policy is to stretch its supposed commitment to international asylum agreements to its limits, bearing in mind that the right to ask for asylum starts at the border points of a country and keep the eyes shut to the devastating consequences of this sort of policy:

1. KEEP THEM OUT! 

"the EU's maritime patrolling operations in the Mediterranean, called Triton and Poseidon"

"capture and destroy vessels used by the people smugglers" 

2. PREFERABLY BY PREVENTING THEM FROM NEVER ATTEMPTING TO LEAVE!

 "EU will engage with countries surrounding Libya through a joint effort between the Commission and the EU's diplomatic service."

"The EU will deploy immigration liaison officers abroad to gather intelligence on migratory flows and strengthen the role of the EU delegations

3. AND IF THEY HAPPEN TO REACH THE EU, GET THEM OUT AS QUICK AS POSSIBLE!

"European Union's asylum support office will to deploy teams in Italy and Greece for joint processing of asylum applications."

"EU governments will fingerprint all migrants."

"EU will consider options for an "emergency relocation mechanism" for migrants."

"EU will establish a new return program for rapid return of "irregular" migrants coordinated by EU agency Frontex from the EU's Mediterranean countries."

At the same time, similar thinking is shaping this adaption to European Union border and refugee policy standards by Bulgaria (along its border to Turkey), which hopes to be admitted as full member shortly and therefore implements this perversity, apparently failing to note the bitter ironic link to its own iron curtain past (also here):

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This is the voice of three monkeys failing to register the complete unsustainability of their chosen path. Or, let me be more precise, this path is completely unsustainable as long as the European Union recognises the notion of its lack of rights to commit organised mass murder. For at the end of the day, this is the only conceivable endpoint that this policy can have.

The idea that capturing a few criminals, currently exploiting the desperate situation of refugees created by European Union policies, would somehow make said refugees stop attempting to finalise their escape is nothing but plain stupidity. Once these bands are dealt with, there will instead be the initiatives of others, not least refugees themselves and ordinary people trying to help them. For the need to escape is not created by these minor border bands of cynic criminals, those are mere symptoms of an infinitely more cynic and inferior way of responding to the ever present needs that have had refugees on their way across history and the world since the dawn of humanity. At that point, the EU will face the choice of continuing the policy and thus deploy the military and police forces referred to in its 10-point programme to start attacking the refugees themselves, besides anyone aiding them. Similarly regarding the idea to "engage with countries surrounding Libya" (and other bordering countries, as the need arises) and "strengthen the role of the EU delegations", effectively to have bordering countries set up concentration camps funded by the EU, to effectively lock the refugees up to stop further escape (a recent analysis by Doctor's without Borders of how bad the situation is in this respect already now is here). Again, the question then arises what will be the EU policy when these incarcerated people – as they have all reason and every moral right to do – attempt to break out. In both cases, the logic of current EU policy seems to dictate  nothing less than genocide. Whether or not it is performed by proxy or bona fide European armed personnel is, in this case, completely irrelevant.

But, of course, my point is that this analysis demonstrates the complete unsustainability of current European Union border and migration policy. Especially pondering that current refugee and migration streams are in fact nothing compared to what may be expected in the future due to the effects of climate change and other environmental problems (also effecting economic and social instability and war in their aftermath), one can easily see that it can end up nowhere else than in massive genocide on desperate people fleeing destitution or other dire circumstances. Pondering the constitutional backbones of the EU, such as the European Convention of Human Rights (not to speak of EU member states' uniform commitment to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), this should effect careful consideration of the increasingly apparent folly of the current policy path among European policy makers and high officials. Is this how you want to end up; as mass murderers on a grand scale – is that what Europe and the European Union is about? This is the question that those three monkeys desperately seek to avoid.

Is Human Extraterrestial Migration Banned by (Monotheistic) Religious Ethics – And Maybe Some Secular Too?

As you know, the ethical assessment and political evaluation of technological risk is one of my main areas of interest, and a focus of one of my main research publications, the book The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk. In that book, I consider a number of futuristic scenarios to illustrate and test my theoretical ideas. One thing that I'm not considering, however, is the vision of human migration to other planets. But this very scenario has now become the topic of some inflamed debating between  a visionary entrepreneurial endeavour to such an effect and the opinions of highly authoritative religious scholars.

As infantile, unrealistic and uneconomic they may seem, there are actual plans for having humans migrate from Earth to other planets – Mars being one in immediate focus, for instance through the initiative Mars-One. I'm one of those who think that, while it may be prudent to actually work on such contingencies (this is one reason why I have accepted to be scientific adviser to the Lifeboat Foundation), making it the primary priority seems to me to be an immoral waste of resources in light of more pressing needs where there are no technological barriers for doing good (such as securing clean drinking water and sewerage installations for all people globally, or fixing the rules of global trade to be at least somewhat less to the disbenefit of those needing it the most). I don't, however, host any principled objection to the idea of human extraterrestial migration – to my mind it's about needs, likelihoods of success and priorities in light of what stakes are up for humanity at the moment.

Others, however, seem to take a more rigid stance. Thus, apparently, the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates has issued a fatwa (i.e., a scholarly, allegedly authoritative interpretation of the tenets of Islam), according to which the idea of a one-way trip to Mars in the Mars-One style, would be too risky and uncertain to be allowed under the ban against recklessly endangering human life:

The committee, presided by Professor Dr Farooq Hamada, said: “Protecting life against all possible dangers and keeping it safe is an issue agreed upon by all religions and is clearly stipulated in verse 4/29 of the Holy Quran: Do not kill yourselves or one another. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful.”

Apparently, the strong wording of these learned clerics is partly motivated by the fact that...

Thousands of volunteers, including some 500 Saudis and other Arabs, have reportedly applied for the mission which costs $6 billion. The committee indicated that some may be interested in travelling to Mars for escaping punishment or standing before Almighty Allah for judgment.
 “This is an absolutely baseless and unacceptable belief because not even an atom falls outside the purview of Allah, the Creator of everything.  This has also been clearly underscored in verse 19&20/93 of the Holy Quran in which Allah says: There is no one in the heavens and earth but that he comes to the Most Merciful as a servant. (Indeed) He has enumerated them and counted them a (full) counting.”

The Mars-One initiative has chosen to respond to this assault on their project (and, I strongly suspect, on its financial viability) not primarily by ridicule or resentment, but in kind, arguing that the mission is in the genral spirit of what some famous muslim explorers have done in the past (which is not really relevant to the argument) and, more interestingly, that central parts of Islamic teaching would rather seem to condone the planned mission, and that the implied risk assessment of the GAIAE committee is flawed from an intellectual perspective:

Space Exploration, just like Earth exploration throughout history, will come with risks and rewards. We would like to respectfully inform the GAIAE about elements of the Mars One mission that reduce the risk to human life as much as possible. It may seem extremely dangerous to send humans to Mars today, but the humans will be preceded by at least eight cargo missions. Robotic unmanned vehicles will prepare the habitable settlement. Water and a breathable atmosphere will be produced inside the habitat and the settlement will be operational for two years, even before the first crew leaves Earth. Each of the cargo missions will land in a system very similar to the human landing capsule. An impressive track record of the landing technology will be established before risking human lives. It should be noted that the moon lander was never test on the Moon before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed successfully on the Moon.
If we may be so bold: the GAIAE should not analyze the risk as they perceive it today. The GAIAE should assess the potential risk for humans as if an unmanned habitable outpost is ready and waiting on Mars. Only when that outpost is established will human lives be risked in Mars One's plan. With eight successful consecutive landing and a habitable settlement waiting on Mars, will the human mission be risk-free? Of course not. Any progress requires taking risks, but in this case the reward is 'the next giant leap for mankind'. That reward is certainly worth the risks involved in this mission.

It remains to be seen what the GAIAE committee will respond. The Mars-One reasoning isn't exactly fail-safe, since it comes down to how the importance of the mission is weighed in light of the cost and what that money could have been used for instead and what those alternative activities might have implied in terms of truly valuable gain and risk to human life and limb. My own theory would probably give the Mars-One option rather low priority in such light, I dare to say without having made any more precise analysis (which, provided the wide range of uncertainty, I would doubt to be possible anyway). And I dare venture the guess that my theory is more allowing to technological adventure than any of the Abrahamitic religions.

For this is my final reflection, inspired by an aside-comment by my colleague Anders Herlitz: The reaction of the Islamic scholars of the UAE is a pretty logical one in light of the strong stance against human taking of human life, not least one's own, in the scriptures of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. As noted by the pioneer theorist of the ethics of risk, theologian Hans Jonas, this stance would seem to warrant a high degree of risk aversion as soon as such scenarios are among the options. For sure (I would say, it's more uncertain if Jonas would be prepared to follow me), taking such risks may – as Mars-One suggests – be justified, but it takes special considerations and circumstances for that to be the case. In particular, venturing on risky missions just for the hell of it, or for making money, or for "doing something different", or for feeling important, or for exapanding human boundaries, or somesuch would in fact not seem to suffice. What would seem to be necessary is the presence of some realistic threat to human life or humanity, where the activity in question would be a necessary or, at least, reasonable response of escape. At the very least, the story of the Ark of Noah would seem to suggest as much.

So, my wonder is really why the GAIAE committee is so alone in its critical response to the Mars-One initiative. Where's the other islamic leaders? Where's the Pope? Where are the Lutheran Arch Bishops or the many preachers of the free churches Where are the chief Rabbis? And, since there are also secular versions around of the stance to the importance of human life, in particular one's own – where's the penetrating analyses from the Future of Humanity Institute and the Institute of the Ethics of Emerging Technology of the Kantian and (late) Wittgensteinian positions on this matter, just to mention the most obvious ones that would seem to qualify?