Outsourcing security intelligence: the risks of digital litter in migration control practices

• In Event: Data-led and Digital Policing: A Global Perspective

Abstract

With the datafication of human mobilities and the growing commodification of surveillance practices, such as high tech border control, securitization of migrants has become a core subject of policing studies. National law enforcement practitioners are under growing pressure of the public discourse and tend to increasingly rely on information of third parties, like global corporate security companies and transnational NGOs to collect and on up to data information. With the growing attention to migration and the increasing use of mobile technologies, new service strategies have been developed by different stakeholders like UNHCR in order to provide fast, transparent and efficient services to people across the borders. Many of these technologies, like digital payment methods are introduced in the framework of humanitarian support of migrants, however, as many biometric experiments in refugee camps have been illustrated, these digital data infrastructures are also regularly commodified as a so-called `security intelligence`. Though basic registration was always part of the tasks of humanitarian organisations, their presence and first-hand contact with refugees or asylum seekers also contributed to their complex role in digitised administrative decision-making in which data is often unverified, manipulated, or outdated. The neoliberal pressure of governments towards NGOs increasingly reinforces the need for efficient and sustainable service provisions by increased data processing and identification practices, including biometric authentication systems. However, this data is also accessible for third party tech companies that may use such data for commercial purposes in the context of state corporate migration control measures. Based on a discourse analysis, this paper aims to explore the risks and limitations of outsourced security intelligence practices established by nongovernmental data infrastructures, in particular considering the role of `digital waste`.

Author

• Veronika Nagy, Utrecht University