When it comes to borders in Europe, the conversation frequently focuses on the walls of the continent, as they are visible and a physical testament to injustice. Still, there are two other crucial elements that are rarely discussed or covered. The first one is the externalisation of borders, far beyond Europe and the Mediterranean; secondly, the less visible walls connected to the use of technology and artificial intelligence to extend the borders of surveillance, away from the limits of the actual borders of the European Union.
Technology and borders: from Como to the Mediterranean
“Since 2015, there has been a detailed adoption of biometric tools, particularly focused on AI tools for border control” researcher and journalist Philip Di Salvo tells UntoldMag. “The pandemic has contributed to the acceleration of this process [all over Europe, as the “Automated Decision-Making Systems in the COVID-19 pandemic: A European Perspective” report by AlgorithmWatch showed in detail in 2020], as biometric systems have been introduced during this time, in different sectors. The fact that access to any closed environment had to be monitored convinced public and private authorities to adopt AI tools”.
“In academic literature, there is a discussion around the digital border, on how surveillance extends the border beyond geography, creating a digital twin to the physical border that people in transit have to cross, in addition to the dangers and violence that they have to face in the real world” Di Salvo adds.
Borders also do not end in the Mediterranean; when many African migrants were trying to reach Germany and other Northern European countries through Switzerland, they were pushed back to Como, Italy; over 500 people ended up in the area beside the town station, effectively stuck there.
The case of Como, Di Salvo observes, has been probably the first case study for Italy and Europe in the misuse of artificial intelligence in this context.
“Como has been a case study because it also showed how public authorities lack digital literacy, when they invest in technological tools. Como’s previous town hall majority, led by Mayor Mario Landriscina and Brothers of Italy [the far-right political party led by now PM Giorgia Meloni], bought for over 300,000 Euro a facial recognition system pitched to them by Huawei and A2A as a smart security system”.
Di Salvo investigated into the case and discovered “how some fundamental authorisation and justifications for the use of this system were missing and how the idea of the local police and the town hall majority was to install a facial recognition system in the area beside Como train station because that is where many migrants were trying to cross the Italian-Swiss border”.
The presence of hundreds of non-white people linked with “an openly xenophobic narrative of potential risks drove the implementation of this system, which then had to be suspended [The Privacy Ombudsman and the Data protection authority were not informed in advance, despite the legal requirements]”.
The Como case is an example of the implementation of artificial intelligence for “security” purposes, with the idea of using migrants as test subjects across one of the EU borders with Switzerland, and it also proves how public authorities are easily swayed by tech companies, which are aware of this and of the surveillance rhetoric and use this to their advantage.
This kind of approach however could also be open to different “domestic” applications, specifically the impact of automation applied to racial profiling and affecting non-white minorities, planned or implemented, in Italy and beyond, with significative evidence to prove this from the US to the UK.
Beyond the Italian-Swiss border, the policing of the Mediterranean also expands through the use of technology.
“As someone who has analysed these issues for the last 10, 15 years, there is a feeling of dejá-vu concerning what is happening in Libya, Tunisia, and the Mediterranean” Lorenzo Pezzani, associate professor at Bologna University, director of Liminal and co-founder of Forensic Oceanography tells UntoldMag.
As Pezzani explains, the progressive shift from sea to air in terms of surveillance has deep meanings and implications.
“Over the last three to four years, the European maritime surveillance apparatus has decreased, largely replaced by an air surveillance one. There is a whole network of planes and a Heron drone patrolling different corners of the Mediterranean, like the Aegean Sea, but it is particularly in the central Mediterranean where the EU and its member states are practicing what would be technically described as “situational awareness”.
This situational awareness “entails monitoring what happens in the central Mediterranean, to share information with the so-called Libyan Coast Guard (and likely the Tunisian one) to intercept migrants and take them back to Libya, a country politically unstable and not considered as safe for asylum seekers. Air surveillance is a response to what remained an issue for Frontex and the member states border agencies”.
Frontex, the EU Border and Coast Guard Agency, has been heavily criticised over what has been its systematic failure to protect people at EU borders over the years, from Human Rights Watch to Amnesty International, from media outlets to members of the European Parliament; the evidence presents Frontex as a gargantuan agency, with great powers but no accountability.
“When Frontex and other agencies found migrants at sea, they had legislative obligations of rescue and of transporting them to a nearby safe port, therefore in the European Union. Despite the general reluctance from Frontex to operate rescue operations, the possibility to do so existed. Air surveillance further widens this divide, and in scientific literature, this is labeled as atmospheric policing, a form of policing that becomes almost impalpable as it is everywhere and nowhere”.
The border-industrial complex and the AI implementation without borders
The use of technology and AI may project a de-responsabilisation of European authorities from the human rights violations across borders; this illusion however disappears by simply following the money, specifically the EU investments.
In addition to the violence against migrants, two other elements that are not discussed in the conversation around migration are how the EU funds border surveillance beyond its borders and how much these policies are destabilising countries in the MENA region and elsewhere.
“Frontex is a paradigmatic case because its budget has been growing exponentially over the years since it was established in 2004. The air surveillance of borders shows this perfectly, as it occurs through contracts that Frontex signs with surveillance companies. Frontex’s drone is managed by Adax, which is an Airbus subsidiary, and many of the planes used by Frontex are managed by the British company BAE…these contracts signed and paid by Frontex lead to the increase of the border industrial complex in Europe” illustrates Pezzani.
Frontex’s budget in fact has increased from 6 million Euro in 2005 to 754 million in 2022 (more than 200 million Euro over its budget of 2021, 535 million Euro).
The externalisation of border surveillance and the use of AI in border policies, specifically in the MENA region, is at the centre of the Artificial Intelligence. The new frontier of the EU’s externalisation strategy report by the independent researcher Antonella Napolitano for EuroMed Rights.
“I specifically looked at how European funds, including those that should be allocated to investment in development, have been used during the years to amplify border surveillance and focused on two of these funds: the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, which is about to run out, and the recently established Neighbourhood Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI)” Napolitano tells UntoldMag.
“I have looked at the kind of projects that have been financed and implemented in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and Libya. If we consider these projects and the AI Act in Europe, we can see a very different kind of attention to the risks for EU citizens compared to the one for those who are not, creating a two-tier system also when it comes to technology and its risks” adds Napolitano.
“The technologies that are created are more and more oriented to prediction, risk assessment, and profiling, systems that create risk profiles for people who arrive at the borders of Europe or apply for asylum. These systems are biased, and when it comes to lie detectors and emotional recognition systems these are not based on solid scientific grounds”.
The possibility of scrutiny of AI and technology decreases dramatically when the developers are private entities, as Napolitano points out.
“There are actors like Palantir, Buddi [which produces smartwatches used to monitor, via facial recognition, migrants who are released from administrative detention], and other companies and hybrid actors (state and private companies) involved in the production and assessment of digital identity systems”
The lack of oversight when private actors are involved goes hand in hand with the lack of legal protection for using these technologies in the MENA region and beyond, in the Sahel region.
“These technologies can then be used beyond the declared intentions, to monitor activists, journalists, and protest leaders, creating paradoxically further instability which can then lead to new migration flows from autocratic countries and fragile democracies” concludes Napolitano.
The right and far-right-driven debate around small boats in the English Channel or Lampedusa, where almost 10,000 people have arrived over the last week may temporarily fade in months to come, only to be reignited around electoral appointments.
In the Italian case, migration has now effectively become a contentious territory, and a competition to the far-right, between PM Giorgia Meloni and her party, Brothers of Italy and Transport Minister (effectively controlling Italian ports), League leader and Deputy PM Matteo Salvini.
In the UK, the focus on small boats is part of the Tories’ Right racist rhetoric, embodied by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, as well as a helpful distraction technique at a time of disastrous cost of living crisis in the country, with the government party running behind the Labour opposition in the run-up to next year’s vote.
However, the damaging use of technology and AI, without oversight, is there to stay, causing the suffering of migrants and great financial gains for private and private-public actors, whose shareholders are not bothered by human rights violations.
