Similarly to many other projects in this database, PERSONA aims to realize a future of both “seamless” travel experiences and rigorous protection of national security with sophisticated border-checking technologies.
The PERSONA project is concerned with such technologies’ social acceptance and respect of ethical as well as legal principles — specifically “flexible, automated and scalable no-gate crossing solutions.”
According to the project’s own description, PERSONA’s main goal is “to design and establish an integrated impact assessment method (IAM PERSONA) to appropriately evaluate the impacts of no-gate crossing point solutions” to ensure that these technologies meet the expectations of public authorities and travelers. The main outcome will be a handbook, available in open access. It is supposed to drive innovation and deployment of the industry’s and border authorities’ future no-gate crossing point solutions, while maintaining their societal acceptance.
A useful list of technologies that are deployed at land, sea, and air borders is featured in deliverables D1.2 (on use cases and their technical requirements) and D4.1 (on field deployment planning and preparation).
Importantly, a Community of Stakeholders (CoS) tool was implemented “for gathering feedback through surveys about the method of integrated impact assessment developed in the PERSONA project” (infographic).
A methodological tool for an Integrated Impact Assessment of border tech was developed, IAM PERSONA: “The PERSONA project has tailored an IIA method, named IAM PERSONA, to the needs of border control authorities attempting to evaluate automated border crossing technologies. IAM PERSONA was conducted by the border control authorities in the PERSONA project, that is the Swedish Police Authority, the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia, and the Israel National Police. The method is based on the legislation and regulation of the European Union”.
A list of the “latest and new generation no-gate crossing point solutions” is provided in deliverable D2.1, with examples from Dubai, Qatar, and China, among others.
A quote from the conclusions may be cause of concern, as it includes “ethnicity” among the features that are automatically extracted by the most innovative border screening solutions: “The study of smart scanners and intelligent sensing gives insights into latest technologies for people and baggage screening, and biometric identification including fingerprint, eye and face recognition. The overview of solutions for extraction of anthropometrical measurements and identification of age, gender and ethnicity provides insights into the research and innovation of new generation border screening services.”
On PERSONA’s website, the liaison with other relevant projects is described, “specifically for close cooperation on assessment of no-gate crossing point solutions” — and more generally for “the sharing of ideas, gathered information, methodology, and results.” Interestingly, the “PERSONA partners” are said to already bringing in “knowledge and connections from past & present related projects.”
Listed projects include EFFECTOR, TRESSPASS, ROXANNE, PROACTIVE, ABC4EU, TELEFI, PREVISION, SMILE, I-CONSENT, D4FLY, METICOS, ASGARD, PROTECT, and MAGNETO.
PERSONA is part of the “BES (Border External Security) Cluster” projects led by METICOS. “New links & synergy with national and international projects of interest” were also aspired.
One of three pursued “Test Study” formats (“Test Study Format B – collaborating projects defined”) for validating PERSONA outputs focuses on testing technologies and associated scenarios defined not by PERSONA but other “collaborating” projects. D4.1 details how such “Test Studies” were planned in conjunction with the TRESPASS and SMILE EU-funded projects:
“TRESSPASS has scheduled three test pilots in support of the development of their risk-based screening method”, and “current plans are set (pending authorisation by Schiphol Airport who are TRESSPASS partners) to include PERSONA in the first of the three pilots (airport border).” The deliverable also says that “in the first of a series of scheduled joint conference calls, it has been decided that PERSONA will not conduct the Test Study in the TRESSPASS pilot directly because of avoiding the use of volunteers who will merely be performing the role of passengers in the pilot. The alternative option is thus being pursued which will run either a simulation of the TRESSPASS technology (for data protection reasons) or a 2D display of such on real travellers at the test site (Schiphol airport).”
As for SMILE, PERSONA will “acquire feedback from SMILE Test Pilot participants and also other travellers crossing the same border in the ‘traditional”‘ way, via distribution of the simplified IAM PERSONA public questionnaire. The questionnaire has been tailored to the project content and will also aid SMILE to gain insight into the public’s acceptance of their proposed technology.”
The project’s details are oftentimes extremely confidential. At times, not even project consortium members managed to obtain some confidential deliverables over technical aspects of other EU-funded projects concerning “no-gate solutions”, including ABC4U, BODEGA, FlySec, TASS, TRESSPASS, and ZONeSEC: “The consultation of the technical requisites of the abovementioned projects is, in some cases, challenging due to the level of confidentiality of the documents,” as stated in D1.2.
As for the TRESSPASS project, this might have been solved through the PERSONA-TRESSPASS collaboration on the above-cited “Test Study,” for which efforts “are being invested in striking a mutually acceptable balance that allows both projects to exchange relevant project-internal confidential documents,” according to D4.1.
The PERSONA Consortium prefers the term “Test Study” to “pilot” as “Test Study” is designed “to suggest that the goal of PERSONA is not to test technical equipment as such, but rather to develop an impact assessment method for the public acceptance of technical equipment” (D4.1).
Format A test studies involved “simulations” to avoid data-protection issues “(i.e. no special categories of personal data, such as biometric data, will be processed).” They would however “be indistinguishable from real-life in terms of visual experience and background information provided to participants,” and would take place at Eurostar terminals in the UK.
Format B test studies involved the assessment of seamless border-crossing technologies developed by other EU-funded “sister projects,” such as TRESSPASS and SMILE.
Lastly, “Test Study format C entails carrying out the IAM PERSONA in the latest version available at the time of testing, ideally in its entirety but alternatively part thereof, by PERSONA’s end-user partners,” according to D4.1, the goal being to validate “the method for impact assessment, i.e. to test whether the method developed by the consortium is ‘usable’ by end-users or whether it needs to be further adjusted.”
Test study locations include Serbia (Nikola Tesla airport, Belgrade), Sweden (Skavsta airport in Stockholm), and Israel (Ben Gurion National Airport, Tel Aviv).
The three main scenarios for these “test studies” included air, land, and sea borders.
According to D1.2, the ” goal was for the described scenarios to be general and viewed as typical settings representing a wide range of use situations in which the technologies can be applied, and the specific test scenario context defined for the border-crossing solutions.”
A “market survey campaign” has also been launched “to collect interests and market insights from the PERSONA CoS specifically to help validate PERSONA’s business concept and guide the exploitation strategy” (“market validation”).
The PERSONA project has the laudable goal of providing both a methodology and a tool to systematically tackle issues on border technologies, rather than produce new ones.
Deliverable D5.3 (effectively, a book entitled “Border Control and New Technologies. Addressing Integrated Impact Assessment”), for example, provides all PERSONA-related projects with a solid background and foundation in applied ethics, methods for impact assessments, and even the social acceptance of border technologies.
Several of the EU-funded projects described in this database would benefit from the IAM PERSONA tool. One might wonder why this has not happened yet already. Will the knowledge, methods, and tools developed during PERSONA actually be applied to all Border External Security (BES Cluster) projects?
D1.2 raises a crucial question that should be asked in all BES projects: What is the relationship between perceived intrusiveness and visibility, and how put it to a test? As the deliverable puts it:
“An important aspect of the scenarios is to allow for testing different levels of intrusiveness given realistic circumstances. For example, being able to walk without stopping while passing through passport control might feel non-intrusive, while in fact, monitoring and detection methods deployed could require a fairly high level of intrusion into individual’s privacy. If convenience and/or invisibility of control mechanisms is accomplished by very intrusive systems, travellers might ultimately prefer a traditional border control method instead. The intrusiveness also depends on how the new technologies are working together with the border guards’ instructions (…).” The so-called “seamless” border-crossing technologies, suggests the deliverable (in a veiled critique of the solutionist logic behind most BES projects), are not necessarily and not always perceived by travelers less intrusive if they are invisible. Not everyone is happy with black boxes automating decisions about their freedom of movement.
Also, and crucially, the deliverable unwittingly adds weight to the specific concern that border surveillance technologies could be turned inward, at the internal — rather than the external — borders of the EU.
“The land border scenario,” according to D1.2, “is also interesting for the reason that internal EU-borders might be re-introduced, temporarily, for emergency reasons. (…) For example, the case of France after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Austria control at the border with Italy as a consequence of the migration crisis. In such case,” concludes the deliverable, “border control solutions for land borders might be very useful.”
However, they could also help entrench and normalize “temporary” measures (e.g., by more effectively implementing them), and ultimately help dismantle the Schengen Agreement. Given the current resurgence of physical and virtual border walls, and the strong anti-immigrant climate within the EU over the last years, it might be appropriate to take this concern serious.
