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ABSTRACT
Private and government sectors are operating hand in hand for biometric identity assurance solutions to meet security requirements at borders, for elections or for the private sector. Our paper will explore Eurodac, a large biometric information database concerning asylum applications and irregular border crossings, as part of the emerging European Big Data Economy. Drawing on the concept of the digital border and of the surveillance assemblage (Haggerty, Kevin D., and Richard V. Ericson. 2000. The Surveillant Assemblage. British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 4: 605–22) we understand Eurodac not only as a technological border but as inflected by social, symbolic, organizational and juridical cultures, practices, and imaginaries that are beyond the literal realm of the electronic space. Our paper investigates the dynamics of big data in the context of the integration of Eurodac within the larger framework of the European Agency for the operational management of large-scale IT systems in the area freedom, security and justice (EU-LISA). EU-LISA is the operational platform of three large-scale European databases with regards to foreigners and their mobility within and towards Europe, namely Eurodac, the Schengen Information System (SIS II) and the Visa Information System (VIS). This paper tries to outline some of the problems brought about when processing big amounts of data for the purpose of European immigration and identification policies.
Notes
1 The data of category 3 may not be stored and should only be compared with category 1 entries within Eurodac. Eurodac has been online since January 15, 2003, and is currently used by 28 EU Member States as well as Iceland and Norway (both since 2001), Switzerland (since 2008) and Liechtenstein (since 2011).
2 For such an approach see our more detailed multi-sited ethnography, involving interviews with transit-migrants, policy experts and other stakeholders on the modus operandi of Eurodac conducted in Greece, Germany and Italy (Tsianos and Kuster Citation2012). The field research to which this contribution partly refers to took place within the context of the project Mig@Net-Transnational Digital Networks, Migration and Gender, funded under the EU Seventh Framework Programm. Cf. http://www.mignetprojekt.eu/.
3 For a discussion of the border zone in relation to the redistribution of urban space as a dimension of the rebordering of immigration politics and the scale of local territories and non-border urban areas see Lebuhn (Citation2012) and Gilbert (Citation2009).
4 An exception represents here Vicky Squire’s reflection, which understands border zones as places of contested irregularity: “An Approach that examines the constitution of borderzones and irregularity through a frame of mobilizing politics thus differs from many Agambenian accounts because it approaches borderzones as relational sites of political struggle, rather than simply as sites of biopolitical control” (Squire Citation2011, 15).
5 The newly founded fund for internal security provides a budget of 4.648 million Euro which should also cover the development of those two IT-systems. Cf. KOMCOM(2011) 753 final.
6 Second generation biometrics are multi-modale biometric systems, advancements such as behavioral biometrics, biometrics in connection with activities and events, called electrophysiological biometrics. These are biometric solutions that rely on the idea of an unobstructed, complete, but unrealistic contact between a fingerprint and a sensor. Cf. Mordini and Tzovaras (Citation2012).
7 Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE).
8 The phrasing in the Regulation that refers to the requirements for granting access to criminal prosecution officials is that the existence of a “substantiated suspicion that the perpetrator of a terrorist or other serious criminal offense has applied for asylum,” and in compliance with proportionality only “once there is an overriding public security concern, that is, if the act committed by the criminal or terrorist to be identified is so reprehensible that it justifies querying a database that registers persons with a clean criminal record” (Recital 5, Paragraph 9, COM (2012) 254 final). In addition, as of now the Member States and Europol must present to the Commission annual reports on the effectiveness of finger print data comparisons for criminal prosecution. These reports should include information about the exact purposes of the comparison as well as the number of cases (Article 40, Paragraph 8, COM (2012) 254 final).
9 Cf. for instance, the press release by EDPS (2012). On the criticism of the stigmatization of asylum seekers, it says: “For instance, if a fingerprint is found at a crime scene, asylum seekers can potentially be identified through Eurodac data while other individuals cannot because similar data is not available for all other groups of society.”
10 Frank Paul’s successor is Bob Rozenburg in the DG Home Affairs Unit B.3 “Information Systems for Borders and Security.”
11 With the Schengen crisis we refer her to a “migration policy’s state of emergency” (Cuttitta et al. Citation2011; Perrin Citation2011) when 60,000 migrants arriving in Italy as a reaction to the so-called Arab spring led to the first temporary collapse of the Schengen system in the course of which for instance internal border controls at the border between France and Italy have been reintroduced. See for this point more details in Tsianos and Kuster (Citation2012).
12 The origin of this principle, which came into effect with the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, is found in Christian social doctrine. It says that “in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.” http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/areas/industrialrelations/dictionary/definitions/subsidiarity.htm
13 COM(2012)254 final, p. 79.
14 Bull, Uniqkey and Daon are the other members of the Consortium which is involved in the delivery of the respective hardware, software, and the associated services.
16 Such is the case in Germany, France, Hungary, Latvia, Great Britain, Austria, and Switzerland.
17 The contract was concluded between the Commission and a consortium, together with Accenture and HP.
18 For this aspect see more detailed Hayes (Citation2014, Citation2006). This concern is increasingly shared by experts, such as for instance Peter Schaar, the former Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Schaar Citation2014).