Immigration, Iris-Scanning, and iBorderCtrl: The Human Rights Impacts of Technological Experiments in Migration

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.

This presentation explores the human rights impacts of experimental and unregulated technologies that are used to manage migration. Nearly 70 million people are currently on the move due to conflict, instability, environmental factors, and economic reasons. 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 detectors deployed 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.

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Petra Molnar
International Human Rights Program
Faculty of Law
University of Toronto

Wed, Nov 27, 2019
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto
200 Larkin