Dr. Thorsten Wetzling

Dr. Thorsten Wetzling heads the research unit "Digital Rights, Surveillance and Democracy" of interface. His research and advocacy focuses on different modes of access and subsequent processing of personal data by national security, law enforcement and defense agencies across Europe. Often this entails a comparative analysis of legal frameworks and accountability and redress mechanisms. Thorsten is founder of the European Intelligence Oversight Network (EION) which regularly explores new ideas and challenges for democratic intelligence governance in collaborative workshops with oversight practitioners from across the continent. Thorsten is also the co-founder and editor of aboutintel.eu – a European discussion forum on surveillance, technology and democracy.

As an expert on international security cooperation and the possibilities and limitations of data-driven oversight, Thorsten appeared several times as an expert witness in the European Parliament and the German Bundestag. Between 2021 and 2022, Thorsten assisted the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) in finding common standards for law enforcement and national security access to personal data in the private sector. Thorsten was also retained by the Council of Europe as a scientific expert to examine the scope of exemptions in the modernized Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has also commissioned Thorsten to contribute to a comparative study on police investigative powers and their democratic oversight. Thorsten’s regularly publishes op-eds which have appeared in Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Handelsblatt, and Zeit Online, among others. Since 2019, Thorsten has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Cyber & Data Security Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He was also a member of the Advisory Board Europe/Transatlantic of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Before joining SNV, Thorsten led a BMBF-funded capacity building project for European security research at the Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security (BIGS). From 2009 to 2011, Thorsten Wetzling conducted research on issues of governance in security policy at the French Institute for International Relations (ifri) in Paris, the RAND Corporation, and the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. as part of the TAPIR Fellowship of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik.

Thorsten Wetzling received his PhD from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva with a comparative study of the performance and reform of intelligence control in Europe.