How surveillance tech controls the fate of migrants
Hundreds of people remain missing and are feared dead following last Wednesday’s shipwreck in the Mediterranean sea. Rescue organizations began receiving distressed calls from people aboard the fishing vessel that was carrying an estimated 750 migrants, mainly from Egypt, Libya and Pakistan, who said they had run out of supplies and that people were dying of thirst. When officials from Greece’s Hellenic Coast Guard approached by boat, the vessel made a turn so abrupt that it capsized and rapidly sank, with hundreds falling into the sea from the outer decks.
What caused the ship to sink, exactly? What would the Hellenic Coast Guard have done had they successfully reached the vessel? And how did these hundreds of people wind up on this ship, only to plunge to their deaths?
Answers are beginning to emerge, thanks to reporting by various outlets including Mada Masr, which has begun investigating the Egyptian smuggling operation that appears to have brought many of the passengers to the ship to begin with.
The story underlines the life-threatening lengths people now go to in order to reach European shores. What it doesn’t tell us, at least not yet, is how technology is playing an increasingly powerful role in determining the fates of people seeking to cross borders. Last month, at Coda, we published an investigation into the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, a Vienna-based non-government agency that has received hundreds of millions of euros in contracts from the EU to supply tools and tactics — including surveillance tech — to non-EU governments in exchange for their cooperation in preventing people from attempting to migrate to Europe.