7amleh recently released a report titled ‘How EU Funding and Exports of High-risk AI Systems Exacerbate Severe Human Rights Violations in Palestine and the Broader Region’. Through an in-depth analysis of European policies, the report highlights how these policies have financed and exported advanced digital technologies used to surveil, control, and repress Palestinians in Palestine and other SWANA countries.
Through funding programmes, investment mechanisms, and technology exports, the EU supports and facilitates the spread of what are deemed ‘high-risk AI systems’ under its regulatory framework (the EU AI Act). These systems are used in migration control, biometric surveillance, predictive security systems, and warfare, exacerbating surveillance and rights violations, hindering democratic participation, and reinforcing discrimination.
The report highlights three ways through which these technologies are exported:
- The EU provides funding for migration control to support governments in the region deploying advanced surveillance technologies (e.g., biometric identification systems and risk-analysis tools).
- EU scientific research and innovation grants and investments fund Israeli weapons and technology companies developing AI-based tools for military operations and surveillance systems.
- EU technology companies export their high-risk AI systems (e.g., facial recognition, biometrics, smart city systems, and digital surveillance infrastructure) to countries in the region.
As the report demonstrates, none of the EU legal mechanisms can ensure meaningful protection for all. This is by design. For all the fuss around the EU regulating high-risk AI systems, it continues to reinforce its racist and colonial mechanisms within and beyond its borders. These findings sit within a longer arc of selective human rights application by the EU, which remains an empty, hypocritical term applicable only to some, but not others.
The transfer of these technologies not only exacerbates the expansion of surveillance and repression capacities of governments and other actors against the populations they govern, but it also boosts the profits of companies and states that benefit from it.
The findings in the report echo other threads revealing the broad network of actors enabling the EU surveillance infrastructure, which stretches within and beyond its borders. Access Now has uncovered the cosy relationship between private companies and EU institutions in migration policy, especially how the technology, security, and big data industries shape the EU’s approach to security and migration. TNI’s report exposes how universities are embedded in Europe’s migration and border regimes, contributing to a growing border-industrial-academic complex. Follow the Money highlighted the relations between Dutch universities and the Israeli military through Horizon Europe projects.
The political elites and the capitalist class will continue to manufacture consent for war, increase investments in surveillance and control, and fundamentally profit off the backs of people. Violations against racialised, trans, working-class, and migrant folks will continue to intensify, and it is imperative that we continue to build an internationalist movement to fight for a future for all.
See: New Report Examines the Role of EU Funding and Export of High-Risk AI Systems in Escalating Human Rights Violations in Palestine and the Region at 7amleh or get the full report (PDF).
Image from the original article.