The Best of Coast to Coast AMMigration and Tech - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 6/23/24
Guest Host George Knapp and Lawyer/Anthropologist Petra Molnar discuss border security around the world, "The Wall" and using AI technology to protect the borders.
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Petro Monar. One of the themes throughout your book is that border security is big business. Tell us how big?
So this is one of the central puzzle pieces to this story, for sure, and it's one that I think I didn't really grasp the magnitude of. You know, we're talking about a multi billion dollars border industrial complex, which is what some colleagues call it. It's been estimated to be around sixty eight to seventy billion dollars in the coming years. Because it is indeed big business. There's so many more innovations, technological interventions that are being proposed and rolled out at different borders around the world, and companies are cashing in. And again, this is not just the US border industrial complex. We're talking about a kind of global phenomenon where technologies are developed in one place, sold to a second place, three purpose for a third place. But overall, this kind of marketplace has grown up around the area and use of technology.
Yeah, it's billions of dollars, and it's also, as you report it throughout the book, it's an arena for experimentation, what works and what doesn't and good gosh, they're trying all kinds of different technologies. You write about AI and how it's being used, share that with our listeners.
Sure so, AI or artificial intelligence is kind of one of the latest manifestations is the way that technologies are playing out at the border. You know, here we're talking about things like things that sometimes can be a bit hard to write about or talk about, algorithms visa triaging, all sorts of machine learning interventions that have been introduced to streamline immigration and refuge processing around the world, but also other uses of AI. If I can just mention two projects that to me like really stick out in my mind, one being these proposed AI LIE detectors that the European Union was playing around with a few years ago through this project called Eye Border Control spelled small Eye Border CTRL. I love the way that these projects are named. Also, you know, you have your iPhone, your iPad and your eyeborder control, and this project was basically trying to use facial recognition or emotion recognition of your faith to make a determination about whether or not you're lying or not at the border and then being kind of processed for secondary screening for me as a refugee lawyer and as someone who used to represent people in court. This is hugely problematic, right, because how can an AI light detecture deal with differences in cross cultural communication, for example, or even someone being nervous and not making eye contact with you know, the avatar.
On the computer.
The humans struggle with these kind of determinations and making all sorts of assumptions about human behavior, or what about trauma and memory and the fact that we don't tell stories in a linear way anyways. Again, human decision makers struggle with this, and I've seen.
This again and again. How can an AI light it texture.
Even begins to get at some of these complexities of human storytelling. Not to mention right that the traditional lighte textors, the ones that go back and forth on paper, right that you see on CSI and other shows, they're not actually even admissible as evidence in a variety of jurisdictions around the world because we know that they are not accurate, and so why have we been playing around with AI in these spaces. Another use of AI, though, is also on the more kind of surveillance and security side of things, by importing it into tools like drones that scan the sky that are fully autonomous, different kinds of towers that use AI power surveillance, and even robodogs, which is something that the Department of Homeland Security announced when I was in the Sonora a few years ago. These kind of quadruped robotic machines that are military grade and that are now joining this arsenal of border technologies and relying on.
AI to do it.
I mean, that's really a kind of intiating and orwellian to have AI. I think you said, you wrote that you had these AI towers along the Sonora border Arizona and Mexico, and from those towers, AI is making decisions about who gets in and who doesn't, and also would be able to dispatch these robodogs that patrol the border. That's pretty spooky.
It is, isn't it.
There's something really kind of visceral about this kind of technology if it makes us uncomfortable, and I think it should, because it highlights again this kind of removal from the humans, not only the human decision maker, but also the person that's caught at the sharpest edges of this tech. And it really is creating this surveillance drag net that is sweeping across the border, and also making the border a lot wider than just that one geographic location, right, because I think we normally think of a border as a wall or a path to cross or something physical, right, But what technology is doing is pushing the border into the sky through drones, through surveillance and other types of technologies, but also widening it horizontally and geographically, because if you have all these towers that are against creating this kind of sweeping surveillance dragnest, it just disaggregates the border from its location, and it makes everything be a border. Your body becomes a border, right as somebody who's trying to cross these spaces.
I think both of the political parties in this country are in favor of a higher high tech border, cyber border in essence greater use of that. Of course, Trump and the Republicans have favored a physical wall. I think the Biden folks have opted for the cyber border and those technologies, but both have their consequences. As you noted throughout the book, the cyber technology solutions to the border have forced people into even more dangerous situations and more of them end up dying as a result.
Right, Yeah, absolutely, George. I mean, and that's the thing to remember, right, States and politicians say, well, we need smart borders, we need more technology to prevent people from coming, to deter them from even making their way to the United States. But again, time and again, studies have proven that people will continue to come, they will not be deterred. What endst that happens is that they will take more dangerous routes, leading to loss of life, as we've seen in the Sonora in Greece and other parts of Europe.
You mentioned in the book about the use of biometrics, also a little spooky in the ways that this technology is being applied to border security people, especially because, as you note, the data that's collected ends up getting sold all over the place to government agencies, to other companies.
Right, that's right.
Yeah, data is big business. Something that my friend Miam Jamal, who's a data rights activists in Kenya, Joey says, data is a new old and I think that's a really great way of thinking about it, because we need a lot more data to power so many of these technologies that have become part and parcel of our lives. And it's something that philosopher Shoshana Zubov also talks about as surveillance capitalism, the fact that we need more and more data to power the world that we are currently in, and biometrics are one manifestation of it, right, Biometrics that's basically collecting data from your body, so it seems like finger printing, iris scanning, even the.
Way you walk.
That can all form this kind of next manifestation of data gathering that we've seen, and for example, refugue camps are places where this happens a lot. Right, We see the importation of iris scanning technology, finger printing, and other types of biometrics that have become very normalized in humanitarian spaces, again under the guise of needing more data. More data is always better. That's the kind of animating conversation there.
Give me your sense about before we go much further, about a physical wall here on the US border. It was kicked around four years ago, and there were proposals to build the across the entire border with Mexico. Give me your sense of whether you think that would work. Is it possible to secure the border in a physical sense.
So I've seen large parts of the wall in Arizona where I've been working, and it's an interesting thing to witness. You know, it's this huge, haulking piece of metal. You can touch it, you can drive to it. It's rusty, and the rust will kind of stain your hand for the rest of the day as this kind of almost like reminder of its physicality. But often it also just ends, you know. I remember this particular moment in one piece of the wall in Arizona where you can drive up to it and kind of climb the hill and pop your head over to the other side. To me, that was such an important reminder that borders and walls are really also a social construct. Right. Sometimes believe politicians that say, oh, well, we're going to make this massive wall that's going to you know, run from post to coast, as if that would work.
But they actually don't work.
And if I can share an anecdote, I was actually recently in Arizona again, just last month, almost maybe three four weeks ago, and because I have this ethnographic apological hat on always, I was like, I'm going to drive down to the border wall and see what's changed since the last year that I was there. And I was there with my friends and journalist Todd Miller, who is an Arizona journalist doing really amazing work in this area.
I urge used to check out his work too, And we.
Were standing there by the wall trying to see, you know, some of the new smart wall additions and things that have been changing. And there was a surveillance tower in front of us as well that we could clearly see, and usually the Customs and Border Patrol trucks were rumbling by. And as we were looking towards the wall, some movement caught my eye and there was a young man who literally scaled the wall and jumped down in front of our eyes and kind of shook himself off and ran off into the neighborhood. And I've never seen it happen in such close proximity before, and it was literally right underneath a surveillance tower. I talked about this anecdote because to me, again, it shows that you can have all the security and all the surveillance in the world, but it doesn't actually work right. People who are desperate will find a way.
To come anyways. So shouldn't then.
The conversation be about, well, how do we make sure that we have a more fair and robust immigration system, How can we support people, How can we also then look at the root causes of migration right like we were talking about before, and actually have those tough conversations about supporting communities so that maybe people feel like they don't have to come in these ways.
Right.
Of course, the situation on along the US Mexican border is much different from what European countries are facing. And you know, you have refugees from Syria and Iraq, and as you write in the book, people coming from Turkey trying to get into the EU and move around and so much they can't build a physical wall that would work because of the ocean, and people come across on boats. There have been absolute tragedies that you document in your book. Talk a little bit about that that frontier and how wild it gets and how deadly it is.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I mean, there are definitely similarities to what happens along the US Mexico corridor. But Europe does have a very kind of unique manifestation. And all of this precisely because of the watery border, right, so, the Mediterranean Sea and the agency that separates Europe from the Middle East and North Africa, and people have been crossing into European territory for decades now, using usually small boats. And you know, during for example, the twenty fifteen twenty sixteen start of the Syria crisis and the rest you know, the war that was happening there, and of course numbers of people coming into Europe, a lot of people were landing on Greek islands, and then that resulted in the creation of.
The so called hotspots quote unquote.
Or islands that were then taking on large numbers of people and building these massive refugee camps as a result.
But what has.
Happened also, and there's been thousands of deaths every year documented people who take these treacherous routes. Oftentimes the boats either sink on their own or in really problematic instances, there's actually been documented cases where coastguards or even the European Border Force which is called frontechs have been implicated in what people sometimes called pushback operations. So instead of allowing people to land on European territory or even assisting them in search and rescue operations, they either leave them there to drown, or they push them back towards Libyan or North African territory. And there's unfortunately been thousands of deaths that have happened along the water waterfront of Europe too, not to mention the land borders as well, because there's also crossings that happen, you know, between the land border, for example, between Greece and Turkey, and other types of roots as well.
You know, we have, as you document in the book as the walls of Eyes. There are these vigilante groups on the US Mexico border that patrol it. They grab a bunch of guns, they get their jeeps and patrol out there at night and in essence take the law in their own hands. That same thing happens in Europe too, right.
Yeah, that's right, that's right.
You know we've heard, you know, similar instances of this happening along the Greek Turkey border, the land border that I just mentioned, and also along the Balkon route as people are trying to make their way into Germany, the Netherlands or other parts of northern and western Europe. So definitely, I mean, it's a phenomenon that we've observed also with the kind of arising far right sentiments and this kind of anti migration movement that I think is a worldwide phenomenon for sure, where local communities feel like they have.
To take matters into their own hands.
The move to far right sentiment in Europe and in this country, I mean, to some degree, is fueled to a large extent by migration, by large numbers of people coming into the country, trying to get into the country, the same in Europe.
Correct.
I'm not sure if I would necessarily agree with that characterization, because of course migration maybe is a factor in these conversations, but I think in fact fueled buy politics and the weaponization of communities that have been marginalized for many, many years. I think migration is an easy scapegoat for politicians. This is something that we're seeing it again and again, not just in the US or Canada, but also in the EU. You just went through elections right at the European Parliament two or three weeks ago, and there was a massive swing to the right, for sure, and one of the key themes was kind of instrumentalizing or using migration as a way to swing voters to your side, right, but without actually looking at what people in Europe in this case need, right jobs, stability, answers to the environmental crisis.
That's happening.
It's just it's easier to blame migration, right, because it is something that a lot of people have very strong feelings about.
You're calling from Germany, you're in Berlin. Can you give me a sense of what it's like there on the ground. I mean, you know, if there are tendencies and we read about it every once in a while, that there are stories here about Germans leaning towards the far right and extremist groups rising. We know where that has led in German history before. It's not a good place, correct.
Yeah, definitely, And I mean this has been a trend for a few years now in Germany with the rise of the sort of neo far right parties, but around Europe as well. Greached another example other euro contentions to But I will also say, you know, there's a lot of deep conversations that are also being had all along the political spectrum where you know, people are scared of the rise of the far right, and in a way it's sad that seemed to have to get to this point, but it also I think it's a hopeful time and it's a very generative time because people are having these conversations about well, this is scary, But how do we build a different world. How do we actually think about these things again from a community based perspective, from a person oriented perspective, how do we come together and try and push for a different way of governing or talking about these issues. I'm seeing that those frends as well, which is hopeful, you know.
I think it can.
Get very depressing, very fast doing this work and seeing the manifestations of it.
But I will say there's also cause for hope.
Well, I haven't heard that before. I haven't heard that from anyone, that there's cause for hope, because it's so it is a depressing issue. I think about the people that die out there and you will walk hundreds of miles and then they're turn away after they get here, or the people who die on boats trying to get into Europe, and gosh, these are heartbreaking stories and emotions. As I said at the beginning of our conversation, runs so hot on this issue. People who think we can't have a country without a border, and I think there's a lot of sympathy for that position.
You know, It's a position that I can definitely understand, especially given again the kind of competing crisis that we are all living through. I think it's also, though, it's time that we maybe think beyond some of these structures and these ideas that we kind of hold dear and have to ask why, right, Because borders are a social constructs. You know, They're not as immutable as we like to think they are. Right, and in North America in particular, right, I mean, borders have been drawn and re drawn many times.
You around the world as well. I think it's important to.
Not take even kind of concepts like this that seems so intractable as something that is static, you know, I do think we actually can rethink them. I'm thinking in particular of a recent book that came out by a colleague of mind, John Washington, called The Case for Open Borders.
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