Post-pandemic Europe, a digital fortress against immigrants

As the world travels again, Europe rules a clear message to migrants: don’t come!

Greek border police make a deafening noise from an armored truck along the border with Turkey. There is a long-range hearing aid on the vehicle, or ‘sound cannon’“. The device is the size of a small TV, but can be as loud as an airplane engine.

Be part of a broad mistress of new physical barriers and experimental units set up and tested in the calm months of the coronavirus pandemic at the 200-kilometer (125-mile) border between Greece and Turkey, to prevent people from entering the European Union illegally.

A new steel wall, similar to the recently built one on the Mexico-U.S. border, blocks common crossings along the Evros River, which separates the two countries.

Long-range cameras are installed in the nearby observation towers, night vision and various sensors. The data will be sent to control centers to identify suspicious movements using artificial intelligence analysis.

“We will have a clear picture of what happens before the border, ” Police Major Dimonsthenis Kamargios, chief of the region’s border guards, told The Associated Press.

The EU has invested 3 billion euros ($ 3.7 billion) of security technology research after the refugee crises of 2015 and 2016, when more than a million people – many fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – arrived in Greece and other EU countries.

Futuristic

The automated surveillance network under construction at the border between Greece and Turkey aims to rapidly detect migrants and prevent them from crossing. River and land patrols are equipped with long-range searchlights and acoustic devices.

Several key components of the network will be commissioned by the end of the year, Kamargios said. “Our goal is to prevent migrants from entering the country illegally. We need modern equipment and tools to do this. ”.

Researchers from universities across Europe, who collaborate with private companies, have developed futuristic auditing and monitoring technology and tested more than ten projects at the Greek borders.

Have been tested lie detectors with artificial intelligence and automated border interrogation systems, as well as attempts to integrate satellite data with images taken by drones on the ground, in the air, over the sea and underwater .

There are biometric readers They record the unique pattern of the veins on a person’s hand to identify them, and the makers of live image reconstruction technologies promise to virtually erase the foliage from the images to expose the people hiding near the border. .

Tests were also carried out in Hungary, Latvia and other points on the eastern border of the EU.

Over the past five years, European lawmakers have moved forward in a more aggressive migration strategy and financed agreements with Mediterranean countries outside the bloc to retain migrants. The European border protection agency, Frontex, has also moved from a coordination mechanism to a multinational security force with its own entity.

But regional agreements exposed the EU in the face of political pressure from their neighbors.

Thousands of migrants crossed this month from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in a single day, prompting Spain to deploy the army. Last year there was a similar crisis on the border between Greece and Turkey, which lasted for three weeks.

Greece lobbies EU to allow Frontex patrol outside your territorial waters to prevent migrants from reaching Lesvos and other Greek islands, the most common migration route to Europe in recent years.

Armed again Technological tools, the security authorities put more emphasis on the external borders.

Flee from wars

Not all test monitoring programs will be included in the new detection system, but rights groups say the new technology will make it even more difficult for refugees to flee wars and the extreme difficulties in getting to safety.

Patrick Breyer, a German MEP, has taken the EU investigative authority to court to claim that be made public details about the artificial intelligence lie detection program.

“What we see at the borders, and in the treatment of foreign citizens in general, is that this is often a testing ground for technologies that will then be used later on Europeans as well. And that’s why everyone should care, in your personal interestBreyer of the German Pirate Party told the AP.

The lawmaker urged the authorities to allow extended supervision border surveillance methods to address ethical concerns and prevent the sale of technology to authoritarian regimes outside the EU through private partners.

Ella Jakubowska, of digital rights group EDRi, said EU authorities are adopting a “techno-solutionism” set aside moral considerations in the face of the complex phenomenon of immigration.

“It is deeply worrying that, once again, EU funds are invested in expensive technologies used in ways that criminalize, they experiment and dehumanize people in transit, ” he said.

Migration flows decreased in many parts of Europe during the pandemic, interrupting a gradual increase in the years. In Greece, for example, the number of arrivals fell nearly 75,000 people in 2019 to 15,700 in 2020, a decrease of 78%.

But the pressure will certainly return. Between 2000 and 2020, the global migrant population increased by more than 80%, to 272 million people, according to United Nations data, which far exceeds global population growth.

In the border town of Poros, the morning conversation in a cafe revolved around the recent border crisis between Spain and Morocco.

Many houses in the area are abandoned and crumbling, and life adapts to this reality.

Use of cows the steel wall as windbreaks and rest nearby.

Panagiotis Kyrgiannis, a resident of Poros, said the wall and other preventive measures the crossings of migrants came to a halt.

“We are used to seeing them go through and come into the city in groups of 80 or 100,” he said. Everything that happens around us does not accompany us. ”

AP Agency

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