The surveillance industrial complex is thriving at the border
On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights issued a pivotal ruling on mass surveillance that should have implications in the U.K. and beyond. The court found that plaintiffs Claudio Guarnieri and Joshua Wieder, both experts on data protection and surveillance, “reasonably” believed that the GCHQ, the U.K.’s main intelligence agency, had intercepted their data under its bulk data collection regime.
Guarnieri and Wieder originally brought their case to the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal in 2016, in what amounted to a test of the system in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, which exposed the large-scale spy programs of not only the U.S., but also the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand governments. When the Tribunal refused to hear their case, they took it to Strasbourg. Even though the two plaintiffs aren’t U.K. citizens, the court decided they still had some baseline rights to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights.
There’s a difference between governments hoovering up data as a routine practice and immigration agencies tracking individuals after they cross a border, but the case should set some precedent concerning the data privacy rights of non-U.K. citizens once they’re in the U.K. What might this mean for migrants coming to the U.K. from across the globe in pursuit of a better life? In a world where everyone depends on internet-based tools to communicate, travel, work and earn money — tools that collect gobs of data about us along the way — the question feels pertinent.
The surveillance industrial complex should be top of mind in the U.S. too, as we learn more about border security and management agencies’ exploitation of digital data to surveil people trying to enter the U.S. In Texas, it came to light in late August that a group of Texas National Guard members — acting within Governor Greg Abbott’s controversial state-run border mission — had carried out an unauthorized spy operation in which they deliberately infiltrated WhatsApp groups used by migrants and smugglers to communicate about their routes.