The colonial biometric legacy at heart of new EU asylum system

Reform of this 20 year-old database will make it the technological sword of EU’s hostile asylum and border policies. It will harness the most nefarious surveillance technologies that exist to date — namely the capture, processing and analysis of biometric data — and enable EU states to have full control over migrants’ body and movements.

With the collection of biometrics, the body has already become a “passport” for many. Biometrics is the process of making data out of a person’s biological or physiological characteristics. Fingerprints, facial images and iris scans are among the forms of biometrics most widely used by states to uniquely identify a person.

Historically, the identification of every single individual is key to the organisation of state control and domination over the population. In particular, it allows state authorities to track, monitor and restrict people’s movements.

It’s no surprise that biometrics are becoming the centrepiece of states’ expanding technological surveillance systems and, it’s even less surprising, that they’re a part of migration control policies. The very origin of biometric surveillance stems from colonial practices of dominating and discriminating against certain groups of people.

All the way back to the slave trade

The transatlantic slave trade developed technologies to mark, identify and track African people as captives and property at a global scale. Forensic identification methods which include detailed description of facial and bodily features as well as inked fingerprints and photographs of criminal suspects — were mostly applied in the French Empire’s colonies to guarantee order and the continuity of the colonial regime.

Likewise, British colonists ran the first large-scale biometric identity programme involving fingerprinting for controlling people in India. Thus, biometric registration as a replacement for documents and identity proof first became a reality for Black, brown and Asian bodies, especially those who were on the move.

The EU’s policies are just a continuation of this draconian history. Its first centralised biometric database, the European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database (EURODAC), was built to control secondary movements of asylum-seekers within the EU and to register people who irregularly cross external borders.

With the ongoing reform of EURODAC, the mass and routine identification of asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants through biometric data processing will become the building block of the EU’s inhumane asylum system.

The proposed reform is presented as a “mere technicality”, yet its transformation is in fact highly political — it will codify in technology the violent treatment given to migrants in the EU. This means systematic criminalisation, detention in prison-like conditions and swift expulsion.

One of the proposed reforms that expands the scope of EURODAC is to capture of people’s facial images in addition to fingerprints.

Collecting additional biometric data has been justified by policymakers because it was reported that some asylum seekers voluntarily burn or damage their fingers to alter their fingerprints and avoid identification.

For people on the move, identification implies an imminent risk of being detained, sent back to another EU state they left — usually because of dreadful reception conditions and few opportunities for integration — or to be deported to so-called “safe third countries” where they risk persecution and torture. Instead of seeing people forced to harm themselves to avoid identification as a sign that migration policies need to be more humane, the EU has decided to further surveil and terrorise migrants.

EURODAC is also being turned into a mass surveillance tool by targeting even more groups of people than before — including children as young as six.

Despite some weak attempts to require that the data collection is done in a ‘child-friendly’ manner, it will not change the outcome — children will be subjected to a seriously invasive and unjustified procedure that de facto stigmatise them.

Consider that in the EU, children younger than 16 are not even able to freely consent to the processing of their personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Meanwhile, migrant children will have their faces scanned and fingerprints taken in border camps and detention centres.

Also, police authorities will be able to access the EURODAC data without having to meet almost any conditions — treating all asylum-seekers and refugees with a presumption of illegality.

EU’s racist double standards exemplified

The use of biometric surveillance in EURODAC has just one explicit purpose — to increase power and control over migrants who have been made socially vulnerable by unfair migration policies and practices. It is intrusive, disproportionate, and contradicts Europe’s own data protection golden standards.

The EU is currently building a regime of exception within its own legal framework for privacy and data protection, in which people on the move gets a differentiated treatment.

The EURODAC reform also demonstrates a larger trend in Europe of increasing criminalisation and the logic of ‘policing’. The EU blends migration management and the fight against crime by equating people seeking safety with security threats. This criminalisation lens leads to discriminatory assumptions and associations, resulting in racialised people and migrants being over-surveilled and targeted.

With the massive expansion of centralised databases, EURODAC being a prime example, the EU can no longer hide its racist double standards.

This article was first publishe here by EUobserver.

Contribution by: Laurence Meyer, Racial and social justice lead, EDRi member, Digital Freedom Fund (DFF) & Chloé Berthélémy, Senior Policy Advisor, EDRi