Although it does not prevent refugees from entering
Europe spends millions on military technologies to deter refugees
Refugees lie on the ground in the frost at the Polish-Belarus border, where they are monitored around the clock.
Reuters
The Heron drone is used by the European Union to monitor its borders.
picture
European Union countries have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies that monitor migrants, from military drones to sensor systems and experimental technologies, to push them away from their borders.
Poland's borders with Belarus have become the latest fronts to test this technology, after Poland agreed to build a wall at a cost of 350 million euros, equipped with highly advanced cameras and sensors that detect any movement.
And the British newspaper The Guardian spoke about the results of spending millions of Europeans, to erect a digital wall on the borders of the Union, which lies from the bustling sea, forests, and mountains, and a technology playground for technology companies that re-modify their products to suit new markets.
The European Union plays a central role in pushing for the use of technology at its borders, whether it is purchased by the European Union’s border forces known as “Frontex” or funded by member states of the Union through sources from the Union, such as the Union Internal Security Fund or the “Horizon project” 2020» which calls for innovation.
In 2018, the European Union predicted that the European security market would grow to 128 billion euros by 2020. Beneficiaries are arms and technology companies that have courted the EU so badly, to the dismay of activists and parliamentarians.
“In fact, all of these technologies don't deter people from crossing the border, the presence of (drones) or helicopters doesn't stop people from crossing the border, and we see People take very dangerous roads to cross.
This is a long history.
As security measures increase on one side of the border, movement will continue on the other.”
strange thoughts
Petra Molnar of Refugee Law Lab, an advocacy group for refugees, said the EU's reliance on these tech companies to develop "strange ideas" into technologies for use at borders was inappropriate.
"They depend on the private sector to make these games for them," she said.
But there are no laws or regulations governing it.
For me, the sad thing is that they are almost certain agreements, in which this money is spent on refugee camps, surveillance and (drones) planes.”
air traffic control
Refugees and migrants trying to enter the European Union by land or sea are monitored from the sky.
The border guards use drones and helicopters in the Balkans, while Greece uses airships on its border with Turkey.
The most expensive tool is the Heron-class drone, which continues to operate for a long time over the Mediterranean.
The European Union Border Guard Force (Frontex) obtained a contract worth 100 million euros last year to purchase Heron and Hermes drones, manufactured by Israeli companies, as both aircraft were used by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. It is capable of flying for more than 30 hours, at an altitude of about 10,000 meters. These aircraft communicate with the "Frontex" command in Warsaw.
Most of the missions start from the island of Malta, and focus on the Libyan search and rescue area, where the Libyan coast guard forces carry out the “withdrawal” when asked to do so by the European Union forces on boats crossing the Mediterranean.
German Member of Parliament, Ozlem Demirel, is campaigning against the European Union's use of "drones" and linking them to arms companies, and says it has turned the issue of immigration into a security issue.
“The arms manufacturers say, ‘This is a security problem, so we have to buy weapons, buy drones, buy surveillance systems,'” Demirel added.
But the European Union always talks about values like human rights, and it criticizes violence, but as the weeks go by we see more people dying, and we have to wonder if the European Union is violating its values.”
Sensors and cameras
The EU's air systems are always on the ground with sensors and special cameras, which are used by border authorities across Europe to detect movement and people in hiding.
It includes mobile radar systems and thermal cameras installed on cars, in addition to precise detectors that detect the presence of carbon dioxide, which are used to detect signs of people hiding inside cars.
Greece deploys thermal cameras and sensor systems along its borders with Turkey, and monitors the arrival of migrants from operations centers, such as "Nia Vaisa" near the meeting point of the Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian borders.
And along this region, Greece, last June, deployed a cannon on a car that emits very loud and deafening sounds, reaching a height of 162 decibels, to force people to return.
Poland hopes to emulate Greece in dealing with the crisis on its border with Belarus.
In October, its parliament approved the construction of a 350-million-euro wall that runs along half its border, is 5.5 meters high, and is equipped with a motion detector and thermal cameras.
observation posts
Last September, Greece opened a refugee camp on the island of Samos that has been described as a prison-like setting.
The camp, which cost $38 million and can accommodate about 3,000 asylum seekers, was surrounded by barbed wire used for military purposes, as well as radars and television cameras to monitor people's movements.
Entry to the camp is by fingerprint, turnstiles, and x-rays.
There is a private security company, in addition to its 50 employees, to run the camp.
It is the first of five camps Greece plans to establish, and it opened two other camps last November.
At the same time, Greece opened a new monitoring center on the island of Samos, capable of displaying video recordings on monitor screens, broadcast from the 35 refugee camps spread across the country.
The Greek government says smart "software" helps alert camps to emergency situations.
Artificial intelligence
The European Union spent €4.5m on a three-year trial of artificial intelligence-powered lie detectors in Greece, Hungary and Latvia.
It is a machine that examines the facial expressions of refugees and migrants when they answer questions, decides if they are lying, and provides the information to a border guard officer.
The last of these experiments ended in 2019, and were considered successful by the European Union, but academics called them "pseudoscience", and they believe that the "simple expressions" that software analyzes cannot be used reliably to judge whether a person is a liar or not. .
The software became the subject of a court case that MP Patrick Breyer took to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, where he argued that examination of the technology should be more general.
The court is expected to issue its decision on December 15.
• All of these technologies do not deter people from crossing the borders, as the presence of “drones” or helicopters does not prevent people from crossing the borders, and we see people taking very dangerous roads to cross, and this is a long history. As security measures increase on one side of the border, movement continues on the other.
• Refugees and migrants attempting to enter the European Union by land or sea are monitored from the sky. The border guards use drones and helicopters in the Balkans, while Greece uses airships on its border with Turkey. The most expensive tool is the Heron-class drone, which continues to operate for a long time over the Mediterranean.
Kamel Ahmed and Lorenzo Todwa ■ Correspondents for the newspaper "The Guardian"
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