‘A privacy nightmare’: the $400m surveillance package inside the US immigration bill
The $118bn bipartisan immigration bill that the US Senate introduced on Sunday is already facing steep opposition, despite a strong statement of support from Joe Biden. The 370-page measure, which also would provide additional aid to Israel and Ukraine, has drawn the ire of both Democrats and Republicans over its proposed asylum and border laws. But privacy, immigration and digital liberties experts are also concerned over another aspect of the bill: more than $400m in funding for additional border surveillance and data-gathering tools.
The lion’s share of that funding will go to two main tools: $170m for additional autonomous surveillance towers and $204m for “expenses related to the analysis of DNA samples”, which includes those collected from migrants detained by border patrol, according to the text of the bill.
“This combination of money for surveillance and surveillance technology, along with the included gutting of asylum, would transform our system and hyper-amplify what’s already happening on the ground,” said Paromita Shah, the executive director of the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law.
The bill describes autonomous surveillance towers as ones that “utilize sensors, onboard computing, and artificial intelligence to identify items of interest that would otherwise be manually identified by personnel”.
The rest of the funding for border surveillance that the Guardian identified includes $47.5m for mobile video surveillance systems and drones and $25m for “familial DNA testing”. The bill also includes $25m in funding for “subterranean detection capabilities” and $10m to acquire data from unmanned surface vehicles or autonomous boats “in support of maritime border security”.
In his statement of support, Biden said the agreement contained the “toughest and fairest” border reforms that the country has had in decades. “It will make our country safer, make our border more secure, and treat people fairly and humanely while preserving legal immigration, consistent with our values as a nation,” the statement reads.
Shah said: “The Biden administration has negotiated itself into a place not even Trump was able to reach when it comes to militarizing the border and setting itself up to be an efficient deportation machine.”
The US has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on these automated surveillance towers, which are primarily made by Anduril Industries – the brainchild of Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR. In 2020, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced it would acquire 200 of these towers from Anduril by 2022 for a reported cost of $250m. As of early January, CBP had deployed 396 surveillance towers along the USMexico border, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). CBP is also planning on testing Anduril autonomous towers along the USCanada border, according to tech news publication 404 Media.
“Rather than solving immigration and border issues, this allocation is a windfall for surveillance tech vendors,” said Saira Hussain, senior staff attorney at EFF.
Shah of Just Futures Law said it was “troublesome” to see the government leaning on untested technology.
“It’s evident that they are presenting a sense of inevitability that technology will dictate the course of your life in the United States, whether it’s by serving as the ‘soft’ enforcer at the border or through the surveillance that will follow you into the country,” said Shah. “We’re talking billions of dollars being poured into technology that, ironically, remains unclear of how exactly it will be deployed.”
The “increase in untested technologies” would also create “a privacy nightmare” for border communities, said Hussain of EFF.