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Research carried out by Privacy International (PI) has raised concerns over the level of involvement that technology companies have in the UK immigration border regime. According to Privacy International, private technology companies face little accountability for their development and deployment of various technologies used across UK borders.
A report published by PI, titled ‘The UK’s privatised migration surveillance regime’, contains details of the role that dozens of private tech firms play in the UK’s immigration and border regime.
The report states: “The close-knit relationship between UK immigration enforcement and the technology sector means UK authorities are able to call on intrusive surveillance powers matching those of anyone else in the world.”
Checking UK immigration status
According to the report, at the front end of things, tech firms are deploying tools such as mobile phone extraction devices - used to analyse the metadata and GPS location of immigrants, aerial surveillance drones to patrol the Channel and portable biometric scanning devices enabling immigration agents to identify people and check their UK immigration status.
PI claims that such technologies are provided by private firms, with many of the front-end tools supplied being supported by intricate back-end systems that are widely used by UK immigration enforcement.
It’s understood that PI’s research uncovered information that the Home Office Biometrics (HOB) database, which is currently in development, will function with tools provided by private tech firms.
Meanwhile, the existing Case Information Database (CID) uses tech provided by private firms to log personal information about all foreign nationals passing through the UK immigration system.
Such databases hold a varied and extensive amount of information including DNA and fingerprints, travel history and a large quantity of metadata retrieved from phones or Wi-Fi networks.
Data brokers
PI claims that UK immigration authorities are also buying information from data brokers including GB Group and Experian. PI’s report states: “These data brokers trade on the information of millions of people and build intricate profiles about our lives.”
The report, which has been compiled purely from open source information, claims that the private tech firms and data brokers contributing to the UK’s border regime are ‘resistant to transparency’. “There’s a general secrecy surrounding the Home Office’s technology ecosystem.
PI’s report names at least 39 private tech firms who have reportedly provided solutions for the UK’s border regime, including:
Accenture
BAE Systems
Cognizant
Deloitte Digital
Elbit
Fujitsu
IBM
Leidos
Northrop Grumman
Palantir
Tekever
Thales
Susceptible to being securitised
During a virtual launch event for the report on 10 February, author of the research and PI advocacy director, Edin Omanovic, pointed to the narrative surrounding UK immigration as being centred around there being ‘too many people’ or the ‘system being broken’.
Omanovic said: “UK immigration is very susceptible to securitisation because everyone entering the UK is seen as a threat that needs to be monitored.”
“That’s almost become ingrained in the national conversation, and the issue fundamentally comes down to this lack of transparency and the secrecy surrounding this entire ecosystem. Technology firms and contractors use this guard of secrecy to hide what the actual problems are, how they sold their systems, what kind of meetings they had in the background, so we can’t as a democratic populace assess what went wrong,” Omanovic added.
Campaign officer at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), Mary Atkinson, said: “The massive reach these companies have into the Home Office stands out in the report. The relationships and processes described are absolutely key to the hostile environment, which has always been an agenda based on data sharing…between, for example, the NHS and Home Office, and vice versa.”
“The report shows how data is used in ways that many people don’t know about to increase surveillance and track people in many aspects of their everyday lives, all with the aim of pursuing the hostile environment,” Atkinson added.
The JCWI campaign officer went on to say that the data-driven approach towards the UK borders adopted by the Home Office is ‘far from tangible’ because mistakes in information held on people could have serious consequences.
Home Office hounding people
She said: “It could lead to an immigration raid on someone’s house. It could mean detainment and a person being separated from their family. There are instances of the Home Office hounding people for years because they have the same name as somebody who has a different immigration history.”
“As the immigration system becomes increasingly digital only, things like that will haunt people in more and more aspects of their daily lives,” she added.
Mozilla fellow and associate director of the Refugee Law Lab, Petra Molnar, said: “The increasing reliance on data and automation in the immigration process is accompanied by very little governance and regulation. This then gets mapped onto pre-existing lines of power in society.”
Molnar claimed that the effects of this are felt most sharply by communities that are already vulnerable, including migrants, asylum seekers and other people on the move.
“We are seeing this play out time and time again in this ‘data-fication’, and this increasing reliance on migration management technologies at and around the border,” Molnar said.
“Communities that we work with already have little power to exercise their rights, let alone mechanisms of redress or even sometimes knowledge that this is even happening. This is done deliberately on part of the state to obfuscate decision making, make it more difficult to follow a line of reasoning, and then perhaps even mount a legal defence,” Molnar added.
Migrants used as testing ground
A report published in November 2020 by the Refugee Law Lab found that migrants were already being used as a ‘testing ground’ for migration management and surveillance tech.
Molnar said: “The increasingly inappropriate over-reliance on the private sector in UK immigration control shows just how firmly embedded the priorities of the private sector and big tech are in the conversation.”
“Why are we ‘innovating’ and creating these new so-called solutions that are, once again, putting certain communities at the sharp edges of this technological development? Why aren’t we using all the sexy technology to root out racist border guards, for example? Well, because very clear priorities are at play when it comes to what technology is funded, what we’re even allowed to imagine is possible in this space,” she added.
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