New EU border security pilot program is all kinds of creepy

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/22/new-eu-border-security-pilot-p.html

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Surely the could just get around all this by simply implanting a small time-bomb in the necks of anyone entering Europe; with the previso that the explosives will be rendered harmless if you leave before the device counts down to zero.

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If I don’t have a computer camera will i be unable to travel to the EU?

This smells like sensationalism.

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Machine learning to monitor human trustworthiness.
Sounds right up the alley of Mainland China for oppression with a bit of high tech dystopian savour.
But maybe that’s just me, yeah?

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That’s what I came here to ask. I don’t have a webcam on my desktop PC, and I don’t own a smartphone.
Am I too poor to be allowed into the EU now?

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Check out my totally trustworthy human micro-expressions…

robot

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It would mean that if it had said that.

I’m a little bit more concerned by this new border bill most of the way through parliament in the UK right now
https://services.parliament.uk/Bills/2017-19/counterterrorismandbordersecurity.html


Colloquially known as the “hard border bill”…

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So another bullshit tech contractor convinced another gullible government to buy their pseudoscientific lie “detection” technology.

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In other news, terrorists now using botox to remove all microexpressions.

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Only running in the lab now. Pilot deployment at Latvian, Hungarian and Greek borders in August 2019 at some specific border points. Standard GDPR related items apply: informed consent for testers, right to opt-out at any time. This is only one of a number of projects funded under the Horizon 2020 EU.3.7 program (total funding: €1.7B):

Specifically this fun project fits into the “Novel mobility concepts for land border security” sub program: https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/rcn/665116_en.html

And here are some other projects in that area, including scarily-named initiatives like PROTECT, CIVILEX, iTRACK, SafeShore and no doubt CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN:

https://cordis.europa.eu/search/result_en?q=contenttype='project'%20AND%20/project/relations/associations/relatedCall/call/identifier='H2020-BES-2015'

All-in-all this is the kind of semi-academic, semi-industrial projects that the EU has been investing in for the last 30 years. It will have some spinoffs, some people will get their PhDs based on the tech, various Researchers will have their stipends paid, that kind of thing. I’m putting my dollar down on some interesting spinoffs but no actual functional system.

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Do NOT go giving the Faragist Brexiters any ideas!

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“In the years after Brexit, a bankrupt nation had no option but to offer it self up as a maximum security prison…”

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Yeah - they’ll be keeping them out and us in. Islands make such good prisons (Alcatraz, Devil’s Island). That is the real reason there’s so much focus on the Irish border, I’ll be bound.

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Northern Ireland, or Prisoner Intake Processing as it will be known. :wink:

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I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I don’t suppose Little Green Men infiltrating Estonia from Russia will be stopped by this. What I would like to see, in Europe as well as in the US, is someone to articulate what a liberal border policy would look like. Democrats have been able to get away with simply being shocked and horrified without having to come up with a policy of their own… I hope they will soon have enough power to have to figure one out. I would like Americans to be told the true cost of fully manning the border, hiring immigration judges, etc. And then I would levy a tax on all Americans to pay for it. But have the accounting be transparent.

Let’s be honest, those people aren’t going to present themselves at a border post. They’ll cross the border in some field in the middle of the night, undetected.

Fixed that for you.

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Not worth it.

Stay home and watch Netflix and eat cheetos till the whites of my eyes look like Trump’s skin job.

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