Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, and welcome to it Could Happen Here podcast,
Speaker 1: which I'm recording at eight in the morning and thus
Speaker 1: without any of my colleagues, and I'm joined today to
Speaker 1: discuss the technological aspects of the border regime by Austin
Speaker 1: Coca of Syracuse University and by Jake Wiener of the
Speaker 1: Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Speaker 2: Hi guys, morning, How are you doing? James good.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to talk more border stuff. I like
Speaker 1: covering this, even though it's sometimes terrible. So what I
Speaker 1: wanted to start off with is, I think our listeners
Speaker 1: will be familiar with CBP one, right, the most cursed
Speaker 1: cell phone out of all time, and both of you
Speaker 1: have written a lot and very insightfully about CBP one.
Speaker 1: So I thought we could kind of do a little
Speaker 1: bit of a breakdown of a the issues with it
Speaker 1: and be like with the issues with it as an app,
Speaker 1: and then the fact that we're using an app being
Speaker 1: a problem inherently. So perhaps we could start with I know, Jake,
Speaker 1: you mentioned you wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the design of the app, So in the process of
Speaker 1: sort of commissioning it and making it, should we start there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think this story is pretty interesting and
Speaker 3: unique because CBP one was built in house by a
Speaker 3: small team at the Office Field Operations aw CBP Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is it's unique, Like there's one other app that
Speaker 3: they built, and I don't really know of other mobile
Speaker 3: apps that have been rolled out with anything close to
Speaker 3: the size of CBP one that have been designed by
Speaker 3: a government agency.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of an odd choice, you know.
Speaker 3: Conceptually, it's not something I'm critical of, Like I think,
Speaker 3: if we're going to have a government that's providing services,
Speaker 3: it's good for them to do things in house.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: It means you're not relying on third parties who are
Speaker 3: able to use information from the app and benefit off
Speaker 3: of it. But it doesn't mean you need the institutional
Speaker 3: competency to be able to design an app and so
Speaker 3: to just like provide a quick history. Basically, a CBP
Speaker 3: one app was built off of the framework of an
Speaker 3: older app called CBP Rome. That app was used just
Speaker 3: for people boating on the Great Lakes because technically, if
Speaker 3: you go like boating on Lake Michigan, you will leave
Speaker 3: the United States if you chase a fish over the
Speaker 3: boundary to Canada. YEA and CBP felt that it was
Speaker 3: very important that people who did that reported leaving and
Speaker 3: coming back into the United States. Yeah, questionable, But they
Speaker 3: built an app to let people do that, and the
Speaker 3: framework for that app used a GPS pining to verify
Speaker 3: when you were back in the US.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is a small app, you know.
Speaker 3: I don't think they encountered too many problems with it
Speaker 3: because you're maybe a couple hundred visitors a day. And
Speaker 3: on that framework, they built out CBP one to do
Speaker 3: a couple of things. It's used for folks like customs folks.
Speaker 3: So if you're importing goods into the country, you can
Speaker 3: do some of that reporting through CBP one and also
Speaker 3: use it to apply for the and obtain the I
Speaker 3: ninety four Travel Form, which is the forum that like
Speaker 3: most folks coming to the United States are going to need.
Speaker 3: And then critically for our uses, is that if you
Speaker 3: are applying for asylum, you can use it to schedule
Speaker 3: an appointment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's been the bulk of my reporting on it,
Speaker 1: is that the bulk of its use I think. So, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and so I'm still blown away with the fact they
Speaker 1: designed it in house. It's it's crazy. Did you ever
Speaker 1: find the job did job posting, so the people who
Speaker 1: designed it, or did they just like get some people
Speaker 1: who were good at it to kind of take a
Speaker 1: swing at it.
Speaker 3: The so, as far as I know from you know,
Speaker 3: I've talked to one of people involved in the creation.
Speaker 3: I think Austin has as well. My understanding is that
Speaker 3: it was like an in house team that already existed. Okay,
Speaker 3: but Austin, you may be able to clarify that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my understanding too.
Speaker 4: I think they have a technology team within the agency that.
Speaker 2: Is using technology in various ways.
Speaker 4: I don't think we have a full understanding of the
Speaker 4: scope of their responsibilities and the work that they've done.
Speaker 4: I think, to Jake's point, it is quite interesting that
Speaker 4: they produce something for the public. It's not unusual, of course,
Speaker 4: for large agencies to have teams in house that deal
Speaker 4: with all of the general technological challenges that every agency
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty three phases, you know, databases, you know,
Speaker 4: keeping government cell phones working and secure and all of that,
Speaker 4: all of that kind of thing. But a lot of
Speaker 4: the things that are public facing from federal agencies tend
Speaker 4: to be contracted out to a private vendor in some way.
Speaker 2: So this is it's quite unique, and.
Speaker 4: But they don't think we have a full scope of
Speaker 4: what they what they are aren't producing in house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they that's interesting because they heavily rely on outside
Speaker 1: contractors for so much of it. Like there's a whole
Speaker 1: industry that you know, starts here in San Diego and
Speaker 1: goes over to Tucson and are probably further into New
Speaker 1: Mexico of people providing surveillance technology to border patrols, and
Speaker 1: then you know, it goes over to the West Bank too.
Speaker 1: Lots of lots of it can be seen. Having talked
Speaker 1: about the the sort of unique approach to design, it's
Speaker 1: probably a good idea to then talk about the implementation
Speaker 1: of zapp and it's kind of lacklusters and understandment.
Speaker 2: It just fucking sucks. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: So like, what in what many ways has it been
Speaker 1: unfit for the purpose that it's supposed to do. So
Speaker 1: I guess first we can talk about technological and inadequacies
Speaker 1: and then more broadly about why this isn't a problem
Speaker 1: you can really solve with an app on a telephone
Speaker 1: that needs to broadband and Wi Fi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll start by saying that I think a
Speaker 3: lot of what's happening with the problem the CPP one
Speaker 3: app is institutional blindness. So the people who design the app,
Speaker 3: I genuinely think want it to work well, and I
Speaker 3: think they're simply not asking the questions that you need
Speaker 3: to be asking. And when you design app like this,
Speaker 3: which is who's really going to be using it? What
Speaker 3: are their needs? What technology? What wireless services to they
Speaker 3: what phones are they using? Basically like, if you're someone
Speaker 3: on the southern border with very little money and probably
Speaker 3: an outdated phone, yes, are you going to be able
Speaker 3: to use this app? Not a great camera? And so
Speaker 3: I think the first place to start with that is
Speaker 3: simply the fact that the app requires a strong Wi
Speaker 3: Fi or SELL signal to use, which is not always present.
Speaker 3: And I think Austin has some good insight into the
Speaker 3: problems with insufficient Wi Fi.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, you know, I think some of what's interesting
Speaker 4: here is the way not only that the app relies
Speaker 4: on Wi Fi, but then the kind of real world
Speaker 4: social consequences here for how people then try to cope
Speaker 4: with these problems. I want to take one step back,
Speaker 4: just really quickly and discuss the world that CBP was
Speaker 4: dropped into because there's some important context here. So as
Speaker 4: I know, you've already covered James. You know, over the
Speaker 4: past three years, the dominant border control policy was Title
Speaker 4: forty two, a COVID era policy that was purportedly motivated
Speaker 4: by concerns about public health. This is where Title forty
Speaker 4: two comes from. Title forty two of the US Code
Speaker 4: pertains to issues of questions of public health. It's not
Speaker 4: an immigration policy. It was a public health policy, although
Speaker 4: detailed reporting has I think pretty well established that it
Speaker 4: was more of a political moment of political opportunism rather
Speaker 4: than a legitimate public health concern. But regardless, that policy
Speaker 4: allowed Customs and Border Protection to effectively turn back anyone
Speaker 4: who arrived at the border, whether they attempted.
Speaker 2: To cross unlawfully or not.
Speaker 4: And the primary human rights concern here was people who
Speaker 4: were seeking asylum, which is their right to do. One
Speaker 4: of the aspects of Title forty two was that there
Speaker 4: was a rare exemption clause built in the allowed people
Speaker 4: who were particularly vulnerable a particular humanitarian concern to attempt
Speaker 4: to effectively apply for this kind of exemption. And until
Speaker 4: January of this year, that process was run by nonprofit organizations.
Speaker 4: CBP had this sort of informal outsourced system where NGOs
Speaker 4: on the Mexican side of the border would effectively conduct
Speaker 4: massive amounts of intake and prioritization and triaging of these
Speaker 4: cases and then submit you know, names to CBP to
Speaker 4: a lot of people to come to ports of entry.
Speaker 4: CBP one effectively replaced that system in January, which meant
Speaker 4: that instead of migrants going through the NGOs, they would
Speaker 4: have to download this app, fill out the information and
Speaker 4: send it in. This is really important to mention because
Speaker 4: the groundwork was actually laid by a tremendous amount of
Speaker 4: effectively unpaid labor on the backs of NGOs on the
Speaker 4: southern side of the border. And you know, is it
Speaker 4: is fair and accurate to say that this was an
Speaker 4: extremely imperfect system and that there were absolutely, you know,
Speaker 4: significant issues with this. But one of the interesting things
Speaker 4: is that the role that NGOs played meant that people
Speaker 4: coming and seeking asylum would then in some ways be
Speaker 4: potentially connected with a broader network of NGOs, support services,
Speaker 4: advocacy and so forth. So the introduction of CBP one
Speaker 4: purportedly bypassed the work of NGOs in screening people for
Speaker 4: the exemption process. However, NGOs still ended up performing all
Speaker 4: this kind of invisible labor because they're the ones who
Speaker 4: effectively were working with migrants to make Wi Fi available.
Speaker 4: And it's not just Wi Fi, it's actually charging your phone.
Speaker 4: When I visited shelters and camps on the southern side
Speaker 4: of the border at the end of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: a big part of their having camps and shelters was
Speaker 4: actually providing electricity, you know, when I was there, and
Speaker 4: I know others have reported on this, James, I'm sure
Speaker 4: you've seen this too. You know, people would be huddled
Speaker 4: around the outlets because they needed to charge their phone.
Speaker 4: If their phone didn't work, if their phone wasn't charged,
Speaker 4: they didn't have access there to CBP one. This was
Speaker 4: already a challenge because the primary form of communication was
Speaker 4: CB was phone calls. They would individuals would get phone calls.
Speaker 4: In fact, I interviewed the Russian family on the Mexican
Speaker 4: side of the border and Matamotos in last November, and
Speaker 4: the family now they.
Speaker 5: And many of the other.
Speaker 4: Migrants I spoke with, and this was also true for
Speaker 4: many migrants. By the way, the families typically the wife
Speaker 4: and children. If there were a family unit would stay
Speaker 4: either in a hotel or a shelter or someplace that
Speaker 4: was more safe, and then the men would effectively have
Speaker 4: nights on the street where they could actually get cell
Speaker 4: phone coverage and things like that. So CBP one introduced
Speaker 4: all of these kinds of technological demands. It's not that
Speaker 4: they weren't there before, but I think it's a different
Speaker 4: matter when you go from interacting with a network of
Speaker 4: NGOs to saying now you're actually interacting with the US
Speaker 4: government and this is the only way that you're going
Speaker 4: to be able to enter the country.
Speaker 2: I think those.
Speaker 4: Demands were quite high, and they've they've clearly had some
Speaker 4: tremendously negative impacts from migrants trying to come through that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, I know have one here, But we've bought
Speaker 1: so many of these, like solar powered charging brick things
Speaker 1: and distributed those. But I have so many photos of
Speaker 1: people's hands reaching through the wall and people trying to
Speaker 1: charge to their phone on the other side of the wall,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's been a big demand for a while.
Speaker 1: But it's certainly when CBP were detaining people in paces
Speaker 1: where he didn't have power and then expecting them to
Speaker 1: also communicate using their telephones. That became a particularly sort
Speaker 1: of ridiculous issue, very upsetting to see it like done
Speaker 1: like that. So, yeah, this this app really isn't a
Speaker 1: solution for the problem we're facing, which is, as you said,
Speaker 1: like a three year backlug on people who have legitimate
Speaker 1: asylum claims being able to make those asylum claims. And
Speaker 1: I guess can we talk about who it favors in,
Speaker 1: you know, implementing this system as a catch all, right,
Speaker 1: not an option, but the option. Who does that favor
Speaker 1: and who does it not?
Speaker 3: Yeah, before we get there, I think it might be
Speaker 3: helpful to just run through, like what it is like
Speaker 3: to use CVP one.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you have to go through because it is.
Speaker 2: And that's.
Speaker 3: When you think about that, think that every step is
Speaker 3: a potential failure point, right, every step you could have
Speaker 3: a glitch, And anytime you have a glitch happen, it's
Speaker 3: going to kick you out of the app and you
Speaker 3: have to restart. So, if you're on a southern border
Speaker 3: need to apply for asylum, You've been walking for months
Speaker 3: from Venezuela, Guatemala, et cetera.
Speaker 2: You got your phone.
Speaker 3: The first thing you have to do is log into
Speaker 3: the app through login dot gov. That's the single sign
Speaker 3: on service that many government agencies use. It works fairly well,
Speaker 3: but you got you, so you register yourself a profile.
Speaker 3: Then you're going to navigate over. Hopefully you speak one
Speaker 3: of the languages that CBP one is elbowent as of now,
Speaker 3: I believe that's English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, although they
Speaker 3: may have added a new language recently. You find the
Speaker 3: right place on the app, not always super clear, to
Speaker 3: submit your asylum application and try and schedule an appointment.
Speaker 3: And then you're going to have to fill out a
Speaker 3: ton of information. You're giving CBP your name, addresses, people
Speaker 3: you know in the US, big form to fill out,
Speaker 3: including often information on like how vulnerable you are, so
Speaker 3: like are you pregnant? Are you disabled? Have you been
Speaker 3: threatened in Mexico? Information that they want to use to
Speaker 3: prioritize you, hopefully, And then you're going to need to
Speaker 3: take a facial photograph that's going to go into CBP
Speaker 3: and Department Homeland Securities databases. It will be run against
Speaker 3: facial recognition searches that they populate with, like the this
Speaker 3: massive facial recognition system, the Traveler Verification service that can
Speaker 3: flag people who are on CBP's target list TSA's target list.
Speaker 2: You could be wrongfully flagged.
Speaker 3: By that because facial recognition is not a perfect technology.
Speaker 3: You're also going to take a facial liveness scan. It's
Speaker 3: related to facial recognition, but it is different. It's a
Speaker 3: different technology and it is untested. There's been no government
Speaker 3: agency that has evaluated facial liveness for bias, and that
Speaker 3: basically is trying to figure out are you a real
Speaker 3: person or are you like a picture of James that
Speaker 3: you're holding up because you're trying to get James an
Speaker 3: appointment and then sell it to them later or something.
Speaker 3: Do the facial liveness scan. That's been the sticking point
Speaker 3: where folks with darker skin and indigenous folks have not
Speaker 3: been able to get through it. We can talk about
Speaker 3: that a little later. You're also going to do a
Speaker 3: GPS pain so your phone, pulling from both cell towers
Speaker 3: and GPS data, is going to try and establish your
Speaker 3: location and send it to CBP. That can create problems.
Speaker 3: If you're pinging off a US cell tower, suddenly it's
Speaker 3: less reliable, might look like you're in the US and
Speaker 3: once you get through all these steps, then you're able
Speaker 3: to submit your information and you're in a lottery or
Speaker 3: whether or not you get an appointment. Great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's the photo thing. I think has been covered.
Speaker 1: Maybe I pc betwe have been covered extensively because this
Speaker 1: is what I do. But I think maybe some people
Speaker 1: aren't aware of the complete inadequacy of those facial liveness scans.
Speaker 1: And I know some nonprofits since you want to have
Speaker 1: light booths, which can help with that, but it's not
Speaker 1: you know, it's again like that money could be doing
Speaker 1: something more useful, right, and then making like a like
Speaker 1: an Instagram booth for people who just want to use
Speaker 1: the exercise illegal right to claim asylum. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about that technology and how it's not working.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think one really important actor here, and the
Speaker 4: reason I wanted to paint some of the contexts was
Speaker 4: and partly selfish because as a geographer, I'm always very
Speaker 4: you know, eager to evangelize about the importance of understanding
Speaker 4: social geography for thinking about questions of you know, human
Speaker 4: rights and asylum and immigration.
Speaker 5: So the facial life this test is a great example
Speaker 5: of that.
Speaker 4: So you know, it's hard to see this unless you've
Speaker 4: been on the ground in some of these places. But
Speaker 4: you know, again, just a historical thing that I think
Speaker 4: will be pretty non controversial. Anti black racism is something
Speaker 4: that's existed for a very long time. It's not just
Speaker 4: in the United States. It's around the world obviously, yea,
Speaker 4: not everywhere, but but you know, obviously through colonialism, through
Speaker 4: settler colonialism, and so forth. It's really shaped not just
Speaker 4: anti black racism, but anti black racism itself has produced
Speaker 4: many of the geographies that we have from redlining, segregation, educational.
Speaker 5: Acts, all kinds of things. The way that the social
Speaker 5: world looks today is already shaped by these issues of racism.
Speaker 5: What that then means is questions like who has access
Speaker 5: to cell phone towers and fast Wi Fi, and who
Speaker 5: can afford up to date smartphones that can meet all
Speaker 5: of the threshold of require the technological requirements to this
Speaker 5: to use. This avenues of software is already distributed and
Speaker 5: fractured by questions of race and identity. What that means is,
Speaker 5: even if the facial liveness test worked perfectly and there
Speaker 5: were no issues with the software, which is not true,
Speaker 5: but let's even just assume that it is still true
Speaker 5: that access to that technology and software is already structured
Speaker 5: by race. So one of the things I noticed, you know,
Speaker 5: having spent time along the border, was just how much
Speaker 5: even in some of the shelters and where black and
Speaker 5: African migrants had access to shelter, was itself much tended
Speaker 5: to be more pushed to the out outside of this
Speaker 5: where you're less likely to get good cell phone coverage,
Speaker 5: less likely to have electricity, much more likely that the
Speaker 5: roads even where I visited, were not paved.
Speaker 4: And I was there when it was raining in Reynosa
Speaker 4: one day, and you know, get some of the places
Speaker 4: where African migrants and African families were staying, and black migrants,
Speaker 4: by the way from Latin America. Let's just remind everyone
Speaker 4: that there are black Latinos living in Latin America, right,
Speaker 4: We're also pushed, you know, more to the outskirts. And
Speaker 4: as a result of that, those factors contributed to access.
Speaker 4: So it wasn't just issues with the software itself, which
Speaker 4: may be there. It's hard for me to evaluate it's not,
Speaker 4: you know, because it's not like we've done our own
Speaker 4: evaluation of that, but it's also all of those contextual factors,
Speaker 4: and I just want to make a fine point on this,
Speaker 4: we know this already. CBP should understand that already and
Speaker 4: understand the various social factors that impact access. So simply saying,
Speaker 4: for instance, if one wanted to take a defensive position
Speaker 4: and say, well, look, we ran the test, the software
Speaker 4: works as intended. There's no racial bias in the software.
Speaker 4: That doesn't get CBP out of the responsibility of saying yes.
Speaker 4: But you absolutely had all the information and a reasonable
Speaker 4: person should have known that this access to this app
Speaker 4: had these kind of technological requirements, and then that access
Speaker 4: was not evenly distributed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really important you said that, actually
Speaker 1: because a lot of reporters it does get reported on.
Speaker 1: There are people doing great work, but like sometimes it
Speaker 1: gets missed because African migrants might not speak Spanish Black
Speaker 1: African migrants and a lot of reporters don't have the
Speaker 1: language skills to talk to people in I worked with
Speaker 1: a fixer who spoke a Romo to Grian and there's
Speaker 1: a lot about it, like five or six other languages
Speaker 1: and help to get me an insight into the very
Speaker 1: difficult situation that lots of African people face. And you
Speaker 1: know that their isolation the relative lack of resources even
Speaker 1: in what's a pretty resource spar setting for everyone, and
Speaker 1: Haitian people, I've spoken to a lot of Haitian people.
Speaker 1: Plus then you add that, like if I think about
Speaker 1: last month, the languages which I was able with through friends,
Speaker 1: through translation to speak to people with you know, Vietnamese
Speaker 1: command you is a dialect of Kurdish, French, right, Swahili, Spanish,
Speaker 1: evidently Dutch. Aside from Spanish, those are not covered. Maybe
Speaker 1: if you're French you can, I think it would be
Speaker 1: still hard to work in Haitian creole of you if
Speaker 1: you spoke sort of more mainland French, those are not
Speaker 1: covered by that app, right, So you have to find
Speaker 1: a way to access that with via translation. And then
Speaker 1: it's very the information makes you incredibly vulnerable to whomever
Speaker 1: if you if you're asking someone to share. Right, It's imperfect.
Speaker 1: It's not a sufficient way to describe it, but it
Speaker 1: did it extremely flawed system.
Speaker 4: To Jake's point, like, I'm also like kind of open
Speaker 4: minded about, you know, about using an app like this.
Speaker 4: I mean there's I mean Jake's right, I mean, if
Speaker 4: you're going to have a government in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: like having some reasonably up to date ways to do
Speaker 4: things is not an unreasonable expectation.
Speaker 5: But there's just so many blatantly.
Speaker 4: Obvious sort of shortcomings that are not difficult to identify
Speaker 4: in preparing this app and understanding what people are likely
Speaker 4: to need, so to have those gaps and then also
Speaker 4: to roll out the app at a time when the
Speaker 4: same policy announcement that rolls out this app is also
Speaker 4: a policy announcement that says this is the only way
Speaker 4: to do it. I mean, imagine if like your new
Speaker 4: policy for like healthcare for some you know, particular healthcare
Speaker 4: you know thing was like, we have to go through
Speaker 4: this route, and we know that eighty percent of people
Speaker 4: aren't going to be able to use this, but now
Speaker 4: this is the only treatment you have an option for.
Speaker 5: I mean, that would be that it's just strange.
Speaker 4: I think I think one thing to just think about
Speaker 4: creatively here is I can imagine a phase rollout of
Speaker 4: this where they did improve it over time, but they
Speaker 4: were adequate, you know, outlets for people who didn't fit
Speaker 4: into the categories that they had built into the app.
Speaker 4: And I think I think that would be a more
Speaker 4: complex and more nuanced and maybe a more more interesting
Speaker 4: way to do it. I just don't think I don't
Speaker 4: think it was rolled out responsibly in that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think we should be honest that beta
Speaker 3: testing an app on hundreds of thousands of the most
Speaker 3: vulnerable people in the world is incredibly responsible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's just cruel.
Speaker 1: It's not in any way appropriate. So I guess we've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about this app. Let's talk about let's
Speaker 1: say you're fortunate enough to get an a sign of
Speaker 1: appointment how to enter the US. You would then, in
Speaker 1: most cases enter something which is called CBP's Alternatives to
Speaker 1: Detention Systems icis.
Speaker 2: Sorry, Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: Let's explain a little bit like why it's an alternative
Speaker 1: to detention? Why would one be detained if you haven't,
Speaker 1: in theory, done anything wrong? Well, in many people's perspective,
Speaker 1: have done anything wrong, I guess. And then what does
Speaker 1: ATD mean? And then we can get into some of
Speaker 1: the privacy issues and the way that it affects not
Speaker 1: just migrants but also everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one thing before we go there, I think would
Speaker 3: be great, just closing the loop on the racial bias discussion.
Speaker 3: This is like an element of my advocacy that I
Speaker 3: talk about all the time in different areas of like
Speaker 3: how facial recognition is used when it's using the criminal
Speaker 3: justice system. Is that there absolutely is bias in most
Speaker 3: facial recognition systems. They work really well for white men
Speaker 3: and incu increasingly less well basically as you run down.
Speaker 2: The privileged spectrum.
Speaker 3: That's an element of how these systems are designed, right,
Speaker 3: It's they get fed a lot of images of white
Speaker 3: men and fewer images of other folks. That's fixable, right,
Speaker 3: Like you can provide a training database that is a whole,
Speaker 3: you know, a good spread of people. It seems to
Speaker 3: not necessarily have been done with the facial liveness for
Speaker 3: CBP one in part because the British company that designed
Speaker 3: it probably did not have access to a lot of
Speaker 3: images of the type of people who would be on
Speaker 3: the southern border, talking about like indigenous Mexican folks, Shield folks,
Speaker 3: just a very large number of different ethnicities. But any
Speaker 3: bias like that is, as Austin said, sitting on top
Speaker 3: of a series of other biases, right of structural biases.
Speaker 3: And so the result we see with a lot of
Speaker 3: facial recognition systems, and this facial ibness system is ceb
Speaker 3: going is no different. Is that a little bit of
Speaker 3: even to a little bit of bias in how the
Speaker 3: facial recognition works gets amplified, and it's amplified by social biases.
Speaker 3: It's amplified by the biases of people who run the
Speaker 3: system and people who interact with it every day, and
Speaker 3: then it's amplified by institutional blindness as well failure to
Speaker 3: recognize a problem. We had facial recognition systems rolled out
Speaker 3: since on some levels since like the early to mid
Speaker 3: two thousands, and we didn't even know that facial that
Speaker 3: bias was a problem in any facial recognition system until
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen. So when you're thinking about and you're hearing
Speaker 3: about like bias testing and the fact that it's been
Speaker 3: bias tested, those tests are never incredibly reliable because they're
Speaker 3: not done in the real world, they're not done with
Speaker 3: the people actually using the technology, they're done in a
Speaker 3: controlled setting, and they're not done by people who have
Speaker 3: a nuanced understanding of how the technology impacts people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's very important to remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's layers of one, layers of bias, and they stack
Speaker 1: to make it harder and harder for certain people coming
Speaker 1: to the United States to get again, what's that right,
Speaker 1: often to just be safe, right, Like some people, especially
Speaker 1: the less advantage you are, sort of on a global scale,
Speaker 1: the likely the less safe you are waiting in Mexico
Speaker 1: to make an appointment for your asylum, right Like, if
Speaker 1: you can't get into a shelter, or you're from a
Speaker 1: group where you don't have community to look out for you,
Speaker 1: you're just that bit more likely to be taken advantage
Speaker 1: of or have something bad happen to you at your family. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll stacks up, I guess to make for a very
Speaker 1: unfortunate situation for people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which means the cause of quants of having a
Speaker 3: glitch happen is way higher.
Speaker 1: Yes, I've personally known people who have had terrible consequences
Speaker 1: from what should have been a very very straightforward asylum
Speaker 1: application and very easy to process very rapidly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a whole it's a whole mess. And I
Speaker 1: know I'm trying to speak more to some of the
Speaker 1: folks who work with African migrants because I think that often, yeah,
Speaker 1: their stories just don't get told, especially at our southern border,
Speaker 1: where like I think Obviously there's this like a lot
Speaker 1: of people like to report on the border but not
Speaker 1: leave New York or DC or whatever they have their
Speaker 1: studio or newspaper or what have you. And I think
Speaker 1: it's easy to miss that if you haven't like us,
Speaker 1: you'd said, been around a lot and seen all these
Speaker 1: things stack up on top of one another. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an important topic that we don't especially as like
Speaker 1: I know, it doesn't get reported on because everyone likes
Speaker 1: to report on Ukraine and only Ukraine, but like there's
Speaker 1: more wars in our Africa or wars in you know,
Speaker 1: set people from Myanmar. It's very hard for them to
Speaker 1: get to the southern border actually from hearing from thousands
Speaker 1: maybe different cases where people can't leave Thailand. But again,
Speaker 1: the system, you know, when you have a whole other
Speaker 1: alphabet that you're trying to access the system in and
Speaker 1: it doesn't work for you then and that makes it
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult for those people. And that, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: is what we call a cliffhanger in the podcasting industry.
Speaker 1: Because we will be back tomorrow with more on how
Speaker 1: ICE tracks migrants and how that tracking of migrants can
Speaker 1: impact other people. People who live within people in their communities.
Speaker 1: I hope you're joined us in. Thanks bye.
Speaker 2: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.