A/75/590 domestic and international decision-making related to the governance of the digital border industry. 46 The “revolving door” between public office and private companies further tightens and blurs the line between government (border control, military) and industry (security and consulting companies). 47 Corporations are also linked with governments through joint ventures. According to one submission, for example, in 2016, French public-private company Civipol set up fingerprint databases for Mali and Senegal. 48 Financed with €53 million from the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for stability and addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa, these projects are aimed at identifying refugees arriving in Europe from both countries and deporting them. 49 France owns 40 per cent of Civipol, while arms producers Airbus, Safran and Thales each own more than 10 per cent of the shares. 50 This further illustrates the manner in which Global North countries use international aid to advance their border agendas in the Global South. 18. One researcher has pointed out the pressing concern of the rise of “technocolonialism” which highlights “the constitutive role that data and digital innovation play in entrenching inequalities between refugee s and humanitarian agencies and, ultimately, inequalities in the global context”, 51 fuelled in part by corporate profit and government abdication of human rights responsibility. These inequalities are entrenched through forms of technological experimentati on, data and value extraction, and direct and indirect forms of discrimination described in section III below. 19. In short, many digital border technologies substitute or aid human decision making processes, sometimes in ways that raise serious human rig hts 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 below highlights the range of discri minatory human rights violations enabled by digital border machinery and infrastructure, calling attention to these expansions of power and the contraction of constraints. III. Mapping racial and xenophobic discrimination in digital border and immigration enforcement A. Direct and indirect discrimination 1. Online platforms 20. Consultations with migrants, refugees and stateless persons highlighted the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to spread racist and xenophobic hatred, and some reported having been targeted directly through personal messages on these platforms. Participants in Malaysia, for example, reported __________________ 46 47 48 49 50 51 10/25 Ibid., citing www.escr-net.org/corporateaccountability/corporatecapture. Submission by Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran and Brami Jegan. Mark Akkerman, “Expanding the fortress: the policies, the profiteers and the people shaped by EU’s border externalisation programme” (2018). Ibid., citing https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundforafrica/sites/euetfa/files/ eutf_2016_annual_report_final_en.pdf. See https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/4290/heres-how-well-connectedsecuritycompany-quietly-building-mass-biometric and www.afronline.org/?p=42722. Mirca Madianou, “Technocolonialism: digital innovation and data practices in the humanitarian response to refugee crises”, Social Media + Society (April 2019). 20-14872