[Talk] [!] This event has been postponed [!]
On 1 April 2020, at 10:00-12:00 at VUB Etterbeek campus (exact location to be announced), Petra Molnar will speak about "Immigration, Iris-Scanning, and iBorderCTRL: The Human Rights Impacts of Migration Control Technologies". The talk is part of the Gender, Technology and Law sessions, which are a collaborative initiative of the Law, Science, Technology and Society Research Group (LSTS) and the Fundamental Rights Centre (FRC) at the VUB.
Mandatory detention of migrants at the US-Mexico border. The wrongful deportation of 7,000 foreign students accused of cheating on a language test. Racist or sexist discrimination based on social media profiles. What do these examples have in common? In every case, an algorithm made a decision with serious consequences for people’s lives. Over 70 million people are currently on the move due to conflict, instability, environmental factors, and economic reasons and the situation in the Mediterranean is worsening. As a result, states and international organizations involved in migration management are exploring various automated decision-making experiments to increase efficiency and support border security.
These experiments range from big data predictions about population movements in the Mediterranean, to Canada’s use of automated decision-making in immigration and refugee applications, to AI lie detectorsdeployed at European borders. However, these technologies are developed with little oversight, transparency, and accountability and often fail to account for the far-reaching impacts on human lives and human rights, resulting in potentially serious breaches of human rights and civil liberties. This presentation draws on Molnar's work in Canada and explores her current project highlighting the lived experiences of people on the move as they are impacted by this technological experimentation.
For up-to-date information about the session, check the respective calendar item.
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