A/75/590 Palantir have proved essential in providing the technology that supports the detention and deportation programmes run by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, 13 raising justified concerns of corporate complicity in human rights violations associated with these programmes. It is not yet clear what data-sharing accountability mechanism will be in place during the World Food Programme–Palantir partnership or whether data subjects will be able to opt out. 14 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. 15 The increasingly fervent collection of data on migrant populations has been criticized for its potential to cause significant privacy breaches and human rights concerns. 16 11. 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 corporation: IBM. 17 Other genocides also relied on systematic tracking of groups, such as the Tutsi registries based on ethnicity identity cards, which facilitated the magnitude of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. 18 Post 9–11, the United States experimented with various modes of data collection on marginalized populations through the Department of Homeland Security’s National Security Entry Exit Registration System, which collected photographs, biometrics, and even first person interview data from over 84,000 flagged individuals coming from mostly Arab States. 19 In all of these cases, different actors, including governments, exploited ideas about the neutrality or non-prejudicial necessity of data collection from marginalized groups to then target those groups on a discriminatory basis. 12. Autonomous technologies are also increasingly used in monitoring and securing border spaces. For example, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) has been testing various unpiloted military-grade drones in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas for the surveillance and interdiction of vessels of migrants and refugees hoping to reach European shores. 20 A joint investigation by Bellingcat, Lighthouse Reports, Der Spiegel, TV Asahi and Report Mainz produced credible evidence in October 2020 that Frontex had been complicit in pushbacks, 21 or the forced returns of refugees and migrants over a border without consideration of individual circumstances and without the possibility to apply for asylum or appeal. Such pushbacks likely violate non-refoulement obligations under international law, and are aided by surveillance technologies. One submission highlighted legal developments in Greece that permit the police to use drone surv eillance to monitor irregular __________________ 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 20-14872 See www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/22/139639/amazon-is-the-invisible-backbone-behindices-immigration-crackdown/. See 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”, World Refugee Council research paper No. 12 (May 2019), available at www.cigionline.org/publications/data-protectionand-digital-agency-refugees. See www.chathamhouse.org/2018/03/beware-notion-better-data-lead-better-outcomes-refugeesand-migrants. Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (Dialog Press, 2012). See www.theengineroom.org/dangerous-data-the-role-of-data-collection-in-genocides/. See www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention/national-securityentry-exit-registration. Petra Molnar, “Technological testing grounds: migration management experim ents and reflections from the ground up” (November 2020). See www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/10/23/frontex-at-fault-european-border-force-complicit-inillegal-pushbacks and www.spiegel.de/international/europe/eu-border-agency-frontex-complicitin-greek-refugee-pushback-campaign-a-4b6cba29-35a3-4d8c-a49f-a12daad450d7. 7/25