“The system of monitoring the more aggressive of the story was tested in the latino population,” says Alvaro Bedoya, executive director, Center for Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University. And explains: “I came to the united STATES in 1987. Since 1992, each time that I called my grandmother to Peru, the Department of Justice was recording the conversation. What was with all the calls from USA to all Latin american countries, with the excuse of controlling drug trafficking. But not all were drug dealers, of course”. Bedoya puts in this example, a massive surveillance launched twenty years before the revelations of Edward Snowden, to illustrate that immigrant population always suffers first experiments with new technologies of surveillance and control. If you are successful with this group as vulnerable, and the company shall not be liable against, it ends up spreading to the rest of the society, as would happen with listeners massive allowed later by George W. Bush.
“It exploits the vulnerability of migrants to test methods and technologies”, warns Galdon
Scandals such as the Cambridge Analytica have placed on today’s abuses that can be committed with the databases and other digital content that are used to create profiles every time more detailed on the citizens. But the migrants, stripped de facto of almost all right trying to cross a border, are particularly vulnerable to these abuses. The collection of records, biometric monitoring of social networks or the abuse of sensitive data becomes their undoing when this information is published by mistake or intentionally. “It takes advantage of the situation of vulnerability of migrants to do things with them that would not with citizens, serves to test methods and technologies,” warns Gemma Galdon, a specialist on the social impact of technology and director of Ethics. For this reason, many specialists warn of this situation and call for the creation of the so-called sanctuaries, digital, environments that prevent them from collecting and disseminating information harmful to migrants and refugees.
“Now there is a lot of discussion about whether we are headed toward a police state, but many communities already live in that police state: for example, the Latin people of the US”, alert Bedoya, one of the lawyers more prominent in the field of the protection of digital privacy. When Trump issued a decree to prohibit the entry from muslim countries, in addition to authorized the creation of profiles to evaluate if an immigrant was going to contribute to society, even with “a monitorieo constant Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, to bring them out of the country,” says Bedoya. This expert recounts numerous examples of databases that are exploited to cause harm to the migrants, such as the automatic reading of license plates of the company is Vigilant, that serves to know the location of any vehicle and that is placed in the hands of the Immigration Service to locate expatriates.
The british Government used a map of the beggars of London, created to protect them, to locate immigrants to deport
The director of International Rights of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Katitza Rodriguez, explains that, in some cases, the refugee must surrender your personal data (name, place of origin, and even your biometric data) to gain access to humanitarian assistance. “If the database is poorly managed, it can be used by other agencies for purposes not humanitarian. For example, cross said humanitarian information with the location data, consumption habits, financial situation of the refugee,” says Rodriguez. Similarly, Bedoya puts as an example of the fears that has the immigrant community in the USA to go to the hospital or the school, because they Betpas generate a lot of data that are not protected and in many cases end up in the hands of Immigration: “A source of data that historically has been used to help the most vulnerable population is used to improve the numbers of deportations. Are collected for one reason and used for another.”
it is Not something that happens only in the united STATES and under the Administration Trump. In the United Kingdom has reported an agreement to share databases, subscribed by the ministries of Health and Interior, along with the National Health Service, to gain access to confidential patient information that will help the work of immigration control. There it met another clear case of malicious abuse of data gathering humanitarian aid: the Ministry of Internal affairs british served as a map of beggars, created to protect those who sleep on the streets of london, to locate immigrants to deport.
Technology that condemns
“The technology sometimes saves and sometimes conviction,” sums up Galdon. That’s why, along with the concept of sanctuary city, where immigrants can feel safe in front of deportation policies, there arises now the need to create these sanctuaries digital. “Places where they can access services without sharing data that put them in danger”, in the words of the director of Ethics. “We have to make sure that they can live without constant fear to interact with the world,” added Bedoya, and a town council “can do a lot to ensure that care of the data, collect only the necessary, or delete them after a period of time”. “The majority of authorities believe that the data gathering can only be good: ‘we Collect more, it will improve the systems, services…,” says Bedoya, who coordinated the sub-committee on privacy of the u.s. Senate.
“governments should not point out to the migrants and subjecting them to surveillance, invasive of social networks simply by being it,” warns Rodriguez
“There are few antibodies in order to understand what technology can and what not”, says Galdon, who points out that humanitarian organizations and even United Nations are taking DNA samples or records biometric “with the best of intentions”, but that can lead to many evils. An investigation of the University of Washington showed that most humanitarian organizations do not take the necessary measures to protect these data. “These biometric data prevent being able to forget your past, become the people do not have the right to be forgotten, because at any time those data can be re-remembered”, complaint.
“The failures of security in the protection of data can have a very high price for those affected, but for the refugees and their families in their country of origin can be life-threatening”, delves Katitza Rodriguez. “Governments should not point out to the migrants and subjecting them to surveillance, invasive of the social networks simply by being it,” warns Rodriguez. The spokeswoman for the EFF, highlights how the right to free expression and association are reduced to ashes by a government that seeks to collect information about them: “For example, to document the chronicle of their beliefs and opinions published on social networks; with the mapping of their social networks; to track your movements, and permanently store this information in a government database, and use it against them when making decisions about your immigration status, or for countless other purposes.”