Session
Refugee Law Lab, York University; Berkman Klein Center, Harvard University
Florian Schmitz, Migration and Technology Monitor (onsite moderator) Sean Rehaag, Refugee Law Lab and Osgoode Hall Law School, York University Wael Qarssifi, Syrian Journalist and Migration and Technology Monitor Fellow 2023 (onsite speaker) Mona Shtaya, Palestinian Digital Rights Activist and Migration and Technology Monitor Fellow 2024 (onsite speaker) Petra Molnar, Associate Director, Refugee Law Lab; Faculty Associate, Berkman Klein Center (onsite speaker)
Florian Schmitz, Migration and Technology Monitor (onsite moderator) Sean Rehaag, Refugee Law Lab and Osgoode Hall Law School, York University Wael Qarssifi, Syrian Journalist and Migration and Technology Monitor Fellow 2023 (onsite speaker) Mona Shtaya, Palestinian Digital Rights Activist and Migration and Technology Monitor Fellow 2024 (onsite speaker) Petra Molnar, Associate Director, Refugee Law Lab; Faculty Associate, Berkman Klein Center (onsite speaker)
Organization's Website
Speakers
Petra Molnar, Associate Director, Refugee Law Lab; Faculty Associate, Berkman Klein Center
Wael Qarssifi, Syrian Journalist and Migration and Technology Monitor Fellow 2023
Mona Shtaya, Palestinian Digital Rights Activists and Migration and Technology Monitor Fellow 2024
Onsite Moderator
Florian Schmitz
Rapporteur
Petra Molnar
SDGs
4. Quality Education
5. Gender Equality
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequalities
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
12. Responsible Production and Consumption
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Targets: Our session touches on many SDG, namely: 4) Quality Education - the need to ensure that digital literacy and participation of affected communities lies front and center of any innovation; 5) Gender Equality - women and people in LGBTQI+ communities are often doubly marginalized and impacted by risky and unregulated technologies; 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth - labour exploitation routinely occurs in the way that data centers operate in Majority World Countries, and how digital colonialism is furthering the growth of Western economies at the expense of others; 9) Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure - private industry plays a major role in the development and deployment of some of the most infringing technologies used at the border, while infrastructure undergirds the way that border technologies are deployed at the border and used to harm people; 10) Reduced Inequalities - true equality means creating spaces for affected communities to tell their own stories and focusing on the discriminatory impacts of border surveillance; 11) Sustainable cities and communities - cities and urban spaces are spaces with large numbers of people on the move and a key constituent in these conversations, while building resilient communities lies at the heart of any intervention committed to safeguarding marginalized groups; 16) Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions - politics of difference, xenophobia, and fear-based policy making is at the heart of why high-risk technologies are increasingly being deployed, both in conflict and humanitarian spaces as well as spaces like the border and in migration. In order to further justice and support strong institutions, the impacts of affected communities must drive the discussion; and 12) Responsible Production and Consumption - how technologies are produced is a key element to ensuring that people's human rights are respected. This includes conversations about necessity and proportionality, as well as whether technologies are actually needed in the first place.
5. Gender Equality
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequalities
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
12. Responsible Production and Consumption
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Targets: Our session touches on many SDG, namely: 4) Quality Education - the need to ensure that digital literacy and participation of affected communities lies front and center of any innovation; 5) Gender Equality - women and people in LGBTQI+ communities are often doubly marginalized and impacted by risky and unregulated technologies; 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth - labour exploitation routinely occurs in the way that data centers operate in Majority World Countries, and how digital colonialism is furthering the growth of Western economies at the expense of others; 9) Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure - private industry plays a major role in the development and deployment of some of the most infringing technologies used at the border, while infrastructure undergirds the way that border technologies are deployed at the border and used to harm people; 10) Reduced Inequalities - true equality means creating spaces for affected communities to tell their own stories and focusing on the discriminatory impacts of border surveillance; 11) Sustainable cities and communities - cities and urban spaces are spaces with large numbers of people on the move and a key constituent in these conversations, while building resilient communities lies at the heart of any intervention committed to safeguarding marginalized groups; 16) Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions - politics of difference, xenophobia, and fear-based policy making is at the heart of why high-risk technologies are increasingly being deployed, both in conflict and humanitarian spaces as well as spaces like the border and in migration. In order to further justice and support strong institutions, the impacts of affected communities must drive the discussion; and 12) Responsible Production and Consumption - how technologies are produced is a key element to ensuring that people's human rights are respected. This includes conversations about necessity and proportionality, as well as whether technologies are actually needed in the first place.
Format
Each speaker will be given 7 minutes to speak about their work and reflect on the following questions:
- What does the interplay of technology and migration mean to you?
Whose perspectives matter when we innovate and why does the private sector continue to determine the norms around the development and deployment of new technologies?
- How do we build a different world, one which centers the perspectives of affected communities?
This lightning round will then be followed by a moderated Q&A from the audience
Duration (minutes)
30
Description
Racism, technology, and borders create a cruel intersection. More and more people seeking safety are getting caught in the crosshairs of an unregulated and harmful set of technologies touted to control borders and ‘manage migration,’ bolstering a multibillion-dollar industry. From robo-dogs to drones to biometrics, high-risk technological experiments are creating the next vanguard of human rights infringements, exacerbating violence at the world's borders. This lightning talk will examine how technology is being deployed by governments on the world’s most vulnerable with little regulation and how borders are now big business, with defense contractors and tech start-ups alike scrambling to capture this highly profitable market. Join lawyer and author of the book The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Petra Molnar who will share her 6 years of work across the border documenting these high risk technologies, as well as Wael Qarssifi, Syrian journalist working on surveillance of vulnerable groups, and Mona Shtaya, digital rights activist from Palestine and an expert on the private sector behind these high risk experiments. Reflecting on the grounded and participatory methodology developed through our Migration and Technology Monitor Project, which incubates projects by colleagues like Mona and Wael, this session ultimately hopes to highlight that innovation is closely tied to power and that affected communities must be brought into conversations around innovation.
The lightning round will be accompanies by photography to ensure that the material is engaging for an online audience and our moderator will monitor online participation for questions in the Q&A portion of the meeting. At the beginning we will also pose a broad question to both onsite and online participants as an ice breaker: When you think about migration and technology, what do you think of? This exercise will generate a word cloud which we will share, and we will ask the question again at the end of the session to see how the responses have changed and compare the two side by side.
The lightning round will be accompanies by photography to ensure that the material is engaging for an online audience and our moderator will monitor online participation for questions in the Q&A portion of the meeting. At the beginning we will also pose a broad question to both onsite and online participants as an ice breaker: When you think about migration and technology, what do you think of? This exercise will generate a word cloud which we will share, and we will ask the question again at the end of the session to see how the responses have changed and compare the two side by side.