Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders

Introduction: Sovereignty and mobilities in a digitised world

Talking to computers at the border

In 2016, a controversial research project called iBorderCtrl won a 4.5 million Euro grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme. The project developed an automated border system that could process non-EU member state nationals. The system used a plethora of cutting-edge digital border technologies, but its standout feature was an Automatic Deception Detection System (ADDS), which made travellers talk to an on-screen AI-powered avatar (O’Shea et al., 2018). The avatar, a graphical male police officer, asked travellers a series of questions while AI-based systems assessed their micro facial expressions to determine whether they were ...