A/HRC/48/Add.xx holders from EU/EEA and Switzerland can go through “eGates” on a “self-service” basis to clear immigration control. 8 “Only certain nationalities can adopt the ‘self-service’ approach, and the nationalities included are affluent and white nations (with the exception of Japan)”; non-nationals of EU/EEA or Switzerland traveling from outside Ireland by air or sea must present themselves to an Immigration Officer upon arrival. 11. One facet of the digital border is the expansive use of biometrics or the “automated recognition of individuals based on their biological and behavioural characteristics.”9 Biometrics can include fingerprint data, retinal scans, and facial recognition, as well as the recognition of a person’s vein and blood vessel patterns, ear shape, and gait. Biometrics are used to establish, record and verify the identity of migrants and refugees. For example, the United Nations (UN) has collected the biometric data of over 8 million people, most of them fleeing conflict or needing humanitarian assistance.10 Researchers have documented the racialized origins of biometric technologies,11 as well as their contemporary discriminatory operation on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender. 12 A report on facial recognition technology (FRT) deployed in border crossing contexts such as airports, notes that even though the best algorithms misrecognize Black women twenty times more than White men, the use of these technologies is increasing globally.13 Accordingly, “where facial recognition is applied as a gate-keeping technology, travellers are excluded from border control mechanisms on the basis of race, gender and other demographic characteristics (e.g. country of origin).” This differential treatment frequently perpetuates negative stereotypes, and may even entail prohibited discrimination that could lead to refoulement. 12. Governmental and humanitarian biometric data collection from refugees and migrants has been linked to severe human rights violations against these groups, notwithstanding the bureaucratic and humanitarian justifications behind the collection of this data. Furthermore, it is unclear what happens to this collected biometric data and whether affected groups have access to their own data. The UN’s World Food Program (WFP), for example, has been criticised for partnering with data mining company Palantir Technologies for a $45 million (USD) contract and sharing 92 million aid recipients’ data.14 Private corporations such as Palantir have proved essential in providing the technology that supports the detention and deportation programs run by the United States (US) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), 15 raising justified concerns of corporate complicity in human rights violations associated with these programs. It is not yet clear what data sharing accountability mechanism will be in place during the WFP-Palantir partnership or whether data subjects will be able to opt out.16 Data collection is not an apolitical exercise, especially when powerful Global North actors collect information on vulnerable populations with no regulated methods of oversight and accountability.17 The increasingly fervent collection of data on migrant populations has been criticized for its potential to cause significant privacy breaches and human rights concerns.18 13. History provides many examples of the discriminatory and even deadly use of data collection from marginalized groups. Nazi Germany strategically collected vast amounts of data on Jewish communities to facilitate the Holocaust, largely in partnership with a private 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Immigrant Council of Ireland, Submission. https://www.biometricsinstitute.org/what-is-biometrics/. These enormous data sets are notoriously hard to track and can also include the retrofitting of old data with newly collected biometrics. See, e.g., http://humanitarian-congress-berlin.org/2018/. See, e.g., Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (2015). A/HRC/44/57. Tamir Israel, FACIAL RECOGNITION AT A CROSSROADS: TRANSFORMATION AT OUR BORDERS & BEYOND (2020). https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/02/05/un-palantir-deal-data-mining-protectionconcerns-wfp. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/22/139639/amazon-is-the-invisible-backbone-behindices-immigration-crackdown/. https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-the-wfp-and-palantir-controversy-should-be-a-wake-up-callfor-humanitarian-community-94307. Dragana Kaurin, DATA PROTECTION AND DIGITAL AGENCY FOR REFUGEES, (2019). https://www.chathamhouse.org/2018/03/beware-notion-better-data-lead-better-outcomes-refugeesand-migrants. 5