Petra Molnar at EDRI: “At the start of this new decade, over 70 million people have been forced to move due to conflict, instability, environmental factors, and economic reasons. As a response to the increased migration into the European Union, many states are looking into various technological experiments to strengthen border enforcement and manage migration. These experiments range from Big Data predictions about population movements in the Mediterranean to automated decision-making in immigration applications and Artificial Intelligence (AI) lie detectors at European borders. However, often these technological experiments do not consider the profound human rights ramifications and real impacts on human lives
A human laboratory of high risk experiments
Technologies of migration management operate in a global context. They reinforce institutions, cultures, policies and laws, and exacerbate the gap between the public and the private sector, where the power to design and deploy innovation comes at the expense of oversight and accountability. Technologies have the power to shape democracy and influence elections, through which they can reinforce the politics of exclusion. The development of technology also reinforces power asymmetries between countries and influence our thinking around which countries can push for innovation, while other spaces like conflict zones and refugee camps become sites of experimentation. The development of technology is not inherently democratic and issues of informed consent and right of refusal are particularly important to think about in humanitarian and forced migration contexts. For example, under the justification of efficiency, refugees in Jordan have their irises scanned in order to receive their weekly rations. Some refugees in the Azraq camp have reported feeling like they did not have the option to refuse to have their irises scanned, because if they did not participate, they would not get food. This is not free and informed consent….(More)”.