Governments are busy trying to stem the mass movement of and migrants who have landed on Europe’s shores so far this year. They follow in the footsteps of more than a million who arrived last year.
That’s why border fences are being hastily put up. The human costs are clear. Ugly scenes unfold daily as frustrated asylum seekers mass at crossing points – the latest in at a crowd who had broken through a border fence, and in Calais, France, where an unofficial camp was bulldozed.
Europe, used to freedom of movement within its Schengen zone and aware of the potential for unrest, is hoping surveillance technology can help it gain control, in part made possible by the popularity of smartphones.
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Earlier this month, Europe’s border agency Frontex called for technology companies to come up with ideas to help it track incoming refugees. It has been suggested that refugees could be persuaded to download apps that send back data on their movements, offering services like weather forecasts in return.
This looks like clutching at straws. Apart from obvious privacy issues, it looks unlikely that official apps would be accessed by refugees on any kind of useful scale. The chances that they will voluntarily use an app developed for a government agency by companies such as Securiport LLC, Crossmatch, Unisys, Thales and 3M, is vanishingly small.
Instead, border agencies should use the scale and power of digital technology to engage with incoming refugees in new ways – perhaps through existing, familiar channels like WhatsApp and Facebook – instead of vainly attempting to track and control them.
On the wrong track
If anything, instead of calling for tools that control refugees through their digital lives, the EU should build tools that help them integrate, as .
Facebook, with its disaster notification mode, has already shown a willingness to develop new tools in response to global crises.
If refugees are going to come – and for the most part, it looks like little will deter them – the best hope for them and countries taking them in is for the arrivals to become autonomous, useful members of society. Mass surveillance of an entire group is the antithesis of this. It lends no trust to a community who, if helped, would likely give more to Europe than they take.
Most importantly, broad digital surveillance of refugees breaches their human rights. Just because their presence is uncomfortable for politicians does not mean that rights should be discarded.
Europe’s border agencies will face few technical challenges syphoning up refugee data in an attempt to exert control. But the social challenges are huge. Europe is desperate, but its authorities should tread carefully. They must remember that for many refugees escaping war and destruction, their phones are the closest thing they have to a home for now.
Hal Hodson is a technology reporter for 91av
