Name: How artificial intelligence is changing asylum seekers’ lives for the worse
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How artificial intelligence is changing asylum seekers’ lives for the worse

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close This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To orderpresentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distributionto colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire aboutpermissions/licensing, please go to: Negasi, a young man in his 20s, came to Europe in a boat over the Mediterranean from Ethiopia by way of Sudan, Chad and Libya.From the moment he landed in Germany to seek asylum seven years ago, his every move across the European Union has been traceable, thanks to the fingerprints he gave. “How can I say no when the police handcuffed me, brought me to the station and forced me to give them my fingerprints?” asked Negasi, whose biometrics are saved in the European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database, shared by all EU member countries.He has been in Belgium for two years, with restricted mobility. He must be careful not to get on the radar of authorities or risk being removed to Germany.“I am tired and I want to go to the U.K.,” said Negasi, adding he knows of people who have burned their fingerprints off to avoid detection.Negasi’s story is laid out in a report on the use of artificial intelligence technology in migration management — from lie detectors and facial recognition at borders; to automated drones surveilling the seas; to invasive biosurveillance measures in refugee camps. The report makes plain the imbalance of power between asylum seekers and states wielding AI tech that can increasingly decide people’s fate without offering them any recourse. “Technologies such as automated decision-making, biometrics and unpiloted drones are increasingly controlling migration and affecting millions of people on the move,” said the report, , which was released Monday.“This allure of using technological interventions at and around the border highlights the very real impacts on people’s lives, exacerbated by a lack of meaningful governance and oversight mechanisms of these technological experiments.”Supported by The Mozilla Foundation and the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA, report author Petra Molnar spent a year researching the use of AI in migration and interviewing migrants in Belgium and Greece, as well as civil society organizations, government representatives and academics.“AI technologies intended to manage migration frequently make it more arbitrary, unjust, discriminatory and invasive. People on the move, an already vulnerable group, are routinely having their rights violated by these technologies,” said Molnar, a Toronto human rights lawyer and Mozilla fellow.“The AI deployed at borders is often inscrutable and unaccountable. It functions as a black box, with no insight into how or why it makes life-altering decisions. And people crossing borders often have no way to appeal these decisions.”Among the key findings of her research:“Various international organizations are using Big Data, or extremely large data sets, to predict population movements. However, data collection is not an apolitical exercise,” said the report.“In an increasingly anti-immigrant global landscape, migration data has also been misrepresented for political ends, to affect the distribution of aid dollars and resources, and support hardline anti-immigration policies.”In 2019, World Food Programme signed a $60-million Cdn deal with Palantir Technologies, which recently joined the EU lobby register and has been criticized for providing technology that supports the detention and deportation programs in the United States.The report says it remains unclear what exactly will happen with the data of 92 million aid recipients shared with the firm or what data-accountability mechanisms are in place during this partnership and whether the people affected can refuse to have their data shared.Governments are also increasingly using people’s electronic devices as verification tools. In Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom and Belgium, laws allow for the seizure of mobile phones from asylum and migration applicants. The data is then extracted and used as part of asylum procedures.“This practice is enabled with the use of mobile extraction tools, which allow an individual to download key data from a smartphone, including contacts, call data, text messages, stored files, location information and more,” the report warned.The coronavirus pandemic has made the use of AI even more pervasive as more states move toward bio-surveillance tracking, automated drones and other types of technologies such as virus-killing robots, COVID-19 contact-tracing cellphone tracking and artificially intelligent thermal cameras to monitor the spread of the virus.“We need a sharper focus on oversight mechanisms grounded in fundamental human rights, mechanisms that recognize the very real risks and harms of technologies used to manage migration, often at the expense of human rights and human lives,” Molnar said.Back in the “squat” near a major train station in Brussels where Molnar met with the 30-plus African migrants, Negasi was still looking for a passage across the English channel, whether by boat or on the back of a truck.Read more about: Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. 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close This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To orderpresentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distributionto colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire aboutpermissions/licensing, please go to: Negasi, a young man in his 20s, came to Europe in a boat over the Mediterranean from Ethiopia by way of Sudan, Chad and Libya.From the moment he landed in Germany to seek asylum seven years ago, his every move across the European Union has been traceable, thanks to the fingerprints he gave. “How can I say no when the police handcuffed me, brought me to the station and...

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Nicholas Keung

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How artificial intelligence is changing asylum seekers’ lives for the worse

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