A/HRC/48/Add.xx 19. Among the emerging digital technologies that drive the border industrial complex, drones that service border monitoring and biometrics that help build “smart borders” 45 play a key role. The big corporate players and beneficiaries in the border monitoring service sector are largely Global North military companies, some of which, like Lockheed Martin, are the largest arms sellers in the world.46 Information technology companies such as IBM are also major players, including in data gathering and processing.47 Many of these corporate actors exert great influence in domestic and international decision-making related to the governance of the digital border industry. 48 Corporations are also linked with governments through joint ventures. For example, in 2016, French public-private company Civipol set up fingerprint databases for Mali and Senegal.49 Financed with 53 million Euros from the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (“EUTF”), these projects aim to identify refugees arriving to Europe from both countries and deport them. 50 France owns 40% of Civipol, while arms producers Airbus, Safran and Thales each own more than 10% of its shares.51 This further illustrates the manner in which Global North countries use international aid to advance their border agendas in the Global South. 20. One researcher has highlighted the pressing concern of the rise of “technocolonialism,” which highlights “the constitutive role that data and digital innovation play in entrenching inequalities between refugees and humanitarian agencies and, ultimately, inequalities in the global context”52 fueled in part by corporate profit and government abdication of human rights responsibility. These inequalities are entrenched through forms of technological experimentation, data and value extraction, and direct and indirect forms of discrimination described in Section III. 21. In short, many digital border technologies replace or aid human decision-making processes, sometimes in ways that raise serious human rights concerns. These technologies also expand the power and control that governments and private actors can exert over migrants, refugees, stateless persons and others while simultaneously shielding this power from legal and judicial constraints. In other words, they magnify the potential for grave human rights abuses, and do so in ways that circumvent substantive and procedural protections that have otherwise been essential in the border enforcement context. Section III highlights the range of discriminatory human rights violations enabled by digital border machinery and infrastructure. III. Mapping Racial and Xenophobic Discrimination in Digital Border and Immigration Enforcement A. Direct and indirect discrimination 1 Online Platforms 22. Migrants, refugees and stateless persons have reported that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp are often used to spread racist and xenophobic hatred, and some reported being targeted directly through personal messages on these platforms. In Malaysia, for example, migrants reported increasing racist and xenophobic advocacy on social media platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic. In some cases, users posted photographs of migrants and refugees they perceived to be “illegal,” raising serious concerns of subsequent, real world targeting of individuals, in addition to online abuse. 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 8 Sooriyakumaran & Jegan, Submission. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., citing https://www.escr-net.org/corporateaccountability/corporatecapture. Sooriyakumaran & Jegan, Submission. Ibid., citing https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundforafrica/sites/euetfa/files/eutf_2016_annual_report_final_en.pdf. Sooriyakumaran & Jegan, Submission. Mirca Madianou “Technocolonialism: digital innovation and data practices in the humanitarian response to the refugee crisis” (2019).