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Content type: News & Analysis
A new report by the UN Working Group on mercenaries analyses the impact of the use of private military and security services in immigration and border management on the rights of migrants, and highlights the responsibilities of private actors in human rights abuses as well as lack of oversight and, ultimately, of accountability of the system.
Governments worldwide have prioritised an approach to immigration that criminalises the act of migration and focuses on security.
Today, borders are not…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International (PI), Fundaciòn Datos Protegidos, Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) and Statewatch responded to the call for submission of the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance on how digital technologies deployed in the context of border enforcement and administration reproduce, reinforce, and compound racial discrimination.
This submission provides information on specific digital technologies in service of border…
Content type: Examples
Amazon has spent $10 million to buy 1,500 cameras to take the temperature of workers from the Chinese firm Zhejiang Dahua Technology Company even though the US previously blacklisted Dahua because it was alleged to have helped China detain and monitor the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
The cameras work by comparing a person’s radiation with a separate infrared calibration device and uses face detection technology to make sure it is looking for heat in the right part of the subjects…
Content type: Long Read
The UK’s Metropolitan Police have began formally deploying Live Facial Recognition technology across London, claiming that it will only be used to identify serious criminals on “bespoke ‘watch lists’” and on “small, targeted” areas.
Yet, at the same time, the UK’s largest police force is also listed as a collaborator in a UK government-funded research programme explicitly intended to "develop unconstrained face recognition technology", aimed “at making face…
Content type: Long Read
It was a quiet evening in Agadez, a bustling Saharan city in the centre of Niger. Thirty-five year old Agali Ahmed was sipping tea at a friend’s place, as he often did, when he received a message: police were at his uncle’s house. When he got there, Ahmed saw men in plainclothes, standing around the building’s gate. Inside, more men were searching the apartment. Three white men, who Ahmed guessed were Spanish, asked for his phone and started taking pictures of him. They told him to follow them…
Content type: Long Read
The European Union (EU) spends billions on research and development aimed at driving economic growth and jobs, as well as furthering the bloc’s broader agenda. Within the current budget, known as Horizon 2020 and covering the years 2014-2020, some €80 billion has been made available for research in a huge number of areas, ranging from finding cures for diseases to helping keep the earth viable for life.
From the same budget, it also funds a lot of projects aimed at developing surveillance…