Border projects see criticism on data sharing transparency

While governments and the travel industry continue to introduce new biometric technologies to border crossing, the lack of regulation and transparency on data privacy could make travelers wary and usurp plans to introduce innovation.

The latest examples of these issues come from Switzerland, Canada the U.S., and the European Union, showing that transparency is an issue even in countries with highly developed awareness of data privacy.

Swiss airports are hoping to expand facial recognition systems beyond passport control and are pushing for legislative changes which critics say may endanger data privacy.

Currently, travelers to Zurich Airport can choose an automated biometric lane for passport checks by scanning their faces at e-gates. In the future, however, Swiss airports want to systematically record passengers with cameras and identify them using facial recognition – during check-in, baggage drop-off and boarding.

The federal government is currently working on revising the Aviation Act to allow the expansion of facial recognition, including their use by private companies. Critics, however, are arguing that this opens the possibility that airlines from countries with lacking data protection regimes could access sensitive biometric data from Swiss citizens, according to local news outlet Saldo.

According to emails from the Zurich Airport to the Federal Office of Civil Aviation, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the airport wants to use biometric facial recognition to “measure and analyze waiting times, passenger flows, and travel times.” Another proposal is using facial recognition for commercial services such as shops and accessing the airport’s WiFI – which Zurich Airport has denied.

Aerosuisse, the umbrella organization of Swiss airports and airlines, is also hoping to “circumvent” the country’s data protection laws to process biometric data even without the travelers’ consent, per Saldo. According to Swiss legislation, capturing facial images requires consent.

Canada and US expand collection of immigration data

In the U.S. and Canada, the drive to expand data collection on border checks is being driven by an increasingly rocky relationship between the two neighbors. Legal experts are criticizing a new agreement that expands the collection of travelers’ biographical and biometric data.

The agreement is an update to the 2012 Beyond the Border Action Plan, which enabled automatic sharing of non-residents’ data during visa applications. In October, the Canadian government also added permanent residents to the list, allowing the sharing of information such as date of birth, immigration status and facial images. The new rule came into effect this month and

According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the update was designed to reduce fraud and improve border security. However, lawyers such as Mario Bellissimo say that the agreement was made without external consultation or a privacy and algorithmic impact assessment, despite its potential to affect millions of people.

“I think we can and must do much better at rolling out these technologies and legal processes in 2025. This is nowhere near international standards,” says Bellissimo, principal attorney at Bellissimo Law Group and former chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s immigration law section. The lack of assessment makes it difficult to parse which biometric and biographic data will be collected, he adds.

IRCC responded that “automated immigration information sharing is undertaken in accordance with each country’s immigration and privacy laws,” adding that the agreement between Canada and the U.S. adheres to strict privacy provisions. The government agency also provided a list of data that can be shared.

U.S.-based immigration lawyer Len Saunders added that the agreement has the potential to be a sovereignty issue, especially given the rhetoric from U.S. President Donald Trump, the Canadian Bar Association National Magazine reports.

President Trump has been threatening to impose tariffs on Canadian goods if the country does not secure borders against irregular migrants and illegal drugs. In response, Canada has promised to introduce new security measures, including more surveillance.

EU’s lack of transparency draws criticism

Switzerland and North America are just the latest example of a long tradition of lacking communication between agencies in charge of border controls and travelers. Over the past years, the EU has been facing calls to release more information on Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe border security projects.

One of the projects navigating concerns around transparency and governance is border security platform Odysseus. Digital rights group Algorithm Watch has reported that Odysseus has so far made only one public deliverable accessible despite the project involving potentially controversial technologies.

The experimental system integrates with legacy systems like AFIS, ABIS, and EES to calculate risk scores for passengers and vehicles and detect identity fraud, smuggling and human trafficking. Its two crucial components are cargo screening technologies and smartphone-based verification.

The core of the platform lies in its data collection and management – travelers send identity and other travel-relevant data before their journey, according to the Border Security Report journal.

Before reaching the border, travelers download a mobile app to citizens to verify their identity through an ePassport with a high level of Assurance based on eIDAS. The app relies on Optical Character Recognition (OCR), NFC chip reading, AI liveness detection, face detection and matching. The passport is stored in the smartphone as a mobile passport alongside other certificates such as visas.

After the travelers reach the border, they are scanned with thermal cameras to assess their anxiety and stress levels. High-resolution cameras perform face recognition and license plate recognition. An X-Ray scans for potential illegal goods while Faceless Person Counting solution measures the number of people in the vehicle.

All of this is sent to the Odysseus platform which generates a risk score which is then used to decide whether a vehicle should be examined or not.

Odysseus is currently being trialed on the Balkan peninsula. In December, participants of the Odysseus project shared the most recent news during a webinar. The initiative is currently ongoing legal analysis and risk-level categorization, they said.

Article Topics

biometric data  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  Canada  |  data privacy  |  data sharing  |  Europe  |  facial recognition  |  Switzerland  |  United States