The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Petra Molnar. New Press, $28.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-620-97836-8

In this unsettling debut study, Molnar, an activist lawyer and international researcher on migration issues, draws attention to a recent proliferation of digital technologies used to surveil “people on the move” and prevent them from crossing borders. Even when migrants do manage to make a border crossing, Molnar asserts, these technologies determine whether to grant them asylum, deport them, or place them in detention camps. Video cameras, sensors, robotic dogs, drones, surveillance towers, and radar track people on land and sea; fingerprinting, DNA collection, voice recognition, and face-scanning document them; and artificial intelligence and computer algorithms utilize large data sets to screen refugees and assess their eligibility for asylum. Molnar spotlights the companies, among them NSO Group and Cellebrite, that sell surveillance technologies, as well as places where such technologies have been deployed: the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the West Bank in Israel, the border between Belarus and Poland, and refugee camps on the Greek island of Lesbos. She concludes with practical strategies for resistance, which include legal challenges and financial disinvestment from surveillance companies. As Molnar brings the panopticon-like structure of migrant surveillance into focus, the implications become increasingly stark (“In Hawaii... robo-dogs were targeting houseless people during the COVID-19 pandemic, reading their temperature”; “another start-up, Brinc, proudly pitched Taser-equipped drones to electrocute people at the U.S.-Mexico border”). This is a grave wake-up call. (May)