Border Security: When Even Public Information Is Kept from the Public 

The EU funded the COMPASS2020 project with almost 5 million euros. It was to develop an AI-supported maritime surveillance system that relies on “data fusion” as well as the combination and coordination of manned and unmanned assets. At the end of October 2021, it was completed.

What has this sophisticated digital surveillance architecture actually amounted to? Was the most important information to be found online so that the publicly accessible COMPASS2020 output and deliverables would be available to the public?

Well, no. Not even after three years of completion. Only two deliverables of minor significance have been publicly shared.

Yet there is method in it

This is a reoccurring issue when it comes to Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe border security projects, AlgorithmWatch found.

EFFECTOR, for example, another maritime surveillance project, was completed at the end of September 2022. Two years later, only five deliverables are available online, none of which addressing ethical and societal aspects.

Ethics-related deliverables are, in fact, mostly guarded and protected from public view.

The ARESIBO project aimed at developing an AI- and Augmented Reality-based platform to improve border guards’ cognitive capabilities. ARESIBO ended in July 2022. All ethics-related project deliverables are labeled “CONFIDENTIAL,” and therefore not meant for public eyes. One such deliverable ought to address the establishment of an “Ethics Board” that includes “relevant independent expertise”: “due to the severity of the ethics issues raised by the proposed research.”

Ethics-related deliverables are labelled "Confidential" on ARESIBO's website. Source: https://aresibo.eu/deliverables)

Ethics-related deliverables are missing from public view in other cases, such as for the recently completed BORDERUAS project to enhance surveillance with unmanned vehicles involved in search and rescue operations.

We also found this withholding of information to be the case in several still running projects. ODYSSEUS is to produce AI and advanced biometric solutions for “seamless” border-crossings since January 2023. Only one public deliverable is publicly accessible. MELCHIOR has been running for more than two years and yet shared none.

Deliverables yet to be delivered

In April 2024, we therefore decided to ask the EU Commission’s Research Executive Agency (REA) that is in charge of managing EU-funded projects in research and innovation why transparency on these projects was delayed.

We focused on three projects:

• The “maritime security” project EURMARS started in October 2022 and failed to produce a single publicly available deliverable after two years of existence, which is not in accordance with the project's own timetable for the release of public deliverables.
• FLEXI-cross was at the time of our request 18 months-deep into the development of a border-checking toolkit and failed to share any public documents.
• iMARS was at the time of our request four months away from completing new Manipulation Attack Detection algorithms against identity fraud. Three public documents were delivered, others were missing.

When would all the missing public documents be expected, we asked.

Nothing to see here

There were no missing deliverables, according to REA. The review and approval procedure just took time, and it was also related to the dates of the reports at the end of a Reporting Period (normally every 12 to 18 months during the lifetime of a project). If the responsible REA Project Officer and supporting experts requested modifications of the deliverables, it took even longer.

We were not provided with any explanation as to whether — and why — this happened in case of EURMARS, FLEXI-cross, and iMARS.

REA saw no bug that needs to be fixed in what we found. Delaying the publication of information for publicly-funded research projects that are undoubtedly of public interest seems not to be a matter of concern, even years after project completion. And when disclosing documents, the agency might only share them in a draft form, noting that the “final version might differ, in some cases even significantly.”

Furthermore, the documents we obtained were “for information only, without the right to reproduce or exploit” them, “and they do not reflect the position of REA and cannot be quoted as such.” What might “exploit” mean in this context? Are we only allowed to look at it but not to speak about it publicly? This would be a rather exclusive notion of what a “public” document means.

We still don’t know when REA will share the final, approved versions with the public. We can say, however, that we don’t share the same idea of public transparency with REA.

Want to learn more about EU-funded experiments at our borders? Read our long-read article:

Read more on our policy & advocacy work on ADM and People on the Move.

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