AI surveillance towers place migrants in ‘even better jeopardy’
The Dwelling Workplace is working at the least eight synthetic intelligence (AI)-powered surveillance towers alongside the South-East coast of England, which critics say are contributing to migrant deaths within the English Channel.
As a part of a undertaking to map the state of England’s coastal surveillance, the Migrants Rights Community (MRN) and researcher Samuel Story have recognized eight operational autonomous surveillance towers between Hastings and Margate the place individuals in search of asylum by way of the Channel typically land, and two extra which have both been dismantled or relocated.
In response to their freedom of data (FoI) marketing campaign, the Dwelling Workplace itself has additionally tacitly acknowledged that elevated border surveillance might place migrants crossing the Channel in “even better jeopardy”.
Created by US defence firm Anduril – the Elvish identify for Aragorn’s sword in The Lord of the Rings, which interprets to “flame of the west” – the 5.5 meter-tall Maritime Sentry Towers are fitted with radar in addition to thermal and electro-optical imaging sensors, enabling the detection of “small boats” and different water-borne objects in a nine-mile radius.
Underpinned by Lattice OS, an AI-powered working system marketed primarily to defence organisations, the towers are able to autonomously piecing collectively knowledge collected from 1000’s of various sources (equivalent to sensors or drones operated by Anduril) to create a “real-time understanding of the surroundings”.
As of April 2025, MRN and Storey have recognized Anduril towers at Fairlight Coastguard Station, Dungeness Lighthouse, Hythe Ranges East Lookout, Shorncliffe Military Camp, Capel le-Ferne Cliffs, Dover Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, Walmer and Kingsdown Golf Membership, and Ramsgate Port.
Whereas a ninth has been recognized simply exterior Lydd Ranges close to Jury’s Hole, and a tenth at Hythes Ranges West Lookout, MRN mentioned these have both been dismantled or relocated.
Growing militarisation
It added that the towers characterize a “bodily marker of the place the Hostile Surroundings begins”, contribute to the rising militarisation of borders and push individuals into taking extra harmful routes.
“The towers usually are not impartial. They’re energetic brokers in an more and more automated system of border apartheid designed to filter, categorise and repel these deemed as ‘undesirable’,” mentioned MRN, including that within the context of the UK’s forthcoming the Border Safety Invoice – which seeks to offer border authorities counter-terrorism-style powers to cope with migrants – individuals in search of security are more and more framed as a nationwide safety risk, resulting in their additional dehumanisation.
“These towers and their AI algorithms don’t make in search of asylum safer,” it mentioned. “They implement border apartheid and exclusion: appearing as a primary port of entry into the UK’s digital hostile surroundings. Whereas autonomous surveillance towers and different types of border securitisation equivalent to drones increase vital questions in regards to the doubtlessly lethal penalties for migrants, they need to additionally make us query the broader encroachment and normalisation of surveillance (and tech corporations) in our day-to-day lives.
“Finally, surveillance is being carried out with out consent, and we’ve a proper to demand transparency and the flexibility to scrutinise this know-how, and what it means for human rights.”
For Storey – who has created and launched a movie primarily based on his analysis into the Anduril towers – the largest remaining query is whether or not knowledge collected by the towers is used to find out asylum circumstances and whether or not, within the context of the upcoming Border Safety Invoice, it could possibly be used as proof in prison prosecutions towards migrants.
Pc Weekly contacted Anduril concerning the claims made about its autonomous surveillance towers, however obtained no acknowledgement or response by time of publication.
Pc Weekly additionally contacted the Dwelling Workplace about each declare made within the story – together with how knowledge generated or captured by the towers is utilized in asylum circumstances – however equally obtained no response by time of publication.
The risk to migrant security
MRN mentioned that though the Dwelling Workplace has been reluctant to share particulars of the towers on the idea that it might help “organised prison gangs”, it has additionally tacitly acknowledged the risk that elevated border surveillance presents to the protection of migrants.
“Disclosure of the requested info might help the criminals in search of to facilitate these harmful small boat crossings by informing organised prison gangs in regards to the know-how being deployed towards them, enabling them to develop countervailing exercise to extend their probability of success, assist their planning and inform new techniques and routings,” it mentioned in response to one in every of Storey’s FoI requests.
Nevertheless, it additionally famous that, if particulars in regards to the towers have been revealed, “migrants could also be positioned in even better jeopardy by making them much less straightforward to detect by UK and French patrols engaged in security of life at sea (Solas) operations”.
In consequence, the Dwelling Workplace determined to use a piece 31 regulation enforcement exemption on every part within the request, which permits state authorities to withhold info whether it is “more likely to prejudice … the operation of immigration controls”.
Heightened hazard
In accordance with MRN, regardless of the division’s resistance to transparency, the Dwelling Workplace’s response to Storey clearly identifies the affect that elevated border surveillance has on migrant deaths: “It’s no secret that elevated surveillance and policing at borders pushes migrants into extra distant and harmful crossing factors whereas forcing them to more and more depend on intermediaries (so-called individuals smugglers).”
Noting {that a} document variety of individuals misplaced their lives making an attempt to cross the Channel in 2024 (as reported by the UN’s Lacking Migrant Venture) – in addition to the excessive death-rate on the US-Mexico border, the place the Digital Frontier Basis has mapped 563 such surveillance towers – MRN added that as autonomous surveillance applied sciences turn into “more and more embedded alongside the English shoreline, the English Channel could emerge as its personal deadly frontier”.
It mentioned this course of has already occurred on the US-Mexico border, the place the towers kind a part of a deterrence infrastructure designed to push migration routes into extra “rugged and lethal terrain”, and which has led to notable will increase in migrant mortality.
“It isn’t tough to understand that the UK authorities has utilised these towers as a part of a border apartheid technique, using this AI surveillance assemblage to additional militarise the southern maritime border,” it mentioned.
Drawing comparisons between US and UK border practices, Storey added that whereas the surveillance towers dotted remotely alongside the cruel terrain of the border with Mexico are actively framed as a deterrent, the surveillance towers within the UK – which will be present in plain sight in comparatively quaint English landscapes – are framed round humanitarian help of migrants.
Nevertheless, he added that given this framing – in addition to the huge array of applied sciences state authorities can leverage to surveil an space as small because the English Channel – it begs the query of why individuals are nonetheless dying.
“What’s the know-how actually doing? It’s ostensibly getting used for humanitarian functions, however is it really succeeding in what they’re claiming it’s doing?” he requested, including that the plain answer could be for the UK authorities to open secure and authorized routes to the UK, as an alternative of counting on costly know-how equivalent to AI to “implement a border that retains individuals out who’re in determined want”.
Transparency and knowledge storage issues
Whereas the Monetary Occasions lined the Dwelling Workplace’s Anduril contract when it was introduced, MRN and Storey mentioned there was little to no scrutiny of the towers since, and that they’re involved by the division’s resistance to transparency, even in response to FoIs.
Particularly, they cited a lack of expertise on contract particulars, the placement of the towers (which have been manually recognized and logged by Storey), the info sharing agreements underpinning their operation, and the way the knowledge collected by the towers could also be used to find out asylum circumstances for these crossing the Channel.
Thus far, the one contract particulars have been confirmed in an FoI response from the Dwelling Workplace to researcher Anna Christoforou, which revealed that its Anduril contract – CCTC: Widespread working image and command interface – is valued at £16,087,370, and runs from 22 June 2022 to 22 June 2025.
Storey mentioned that, from his expertise, the FoI system is extra about opacity than transparency, and making an attempt to open up info on border and immigration points particularly is sort of a “recreation of cat and mouse” with the Dwelling Workplace. “It’s extraordinarily apparent they don’t actually have any intention of really disclosing info that may result in correct public consciousness, discourse, transparency et cetera … there’s no real interest in having a public dialogue about this surveillance of individuals,” he mentioned.
Commenting on the appliance of the regulation enforcement exemption to the knowledge requested by Storey, impartial knowledge safety and FoI marketing consultant Tim Turner advised Pc Weekly it might have been misapplied if the division didn’t full a “prejudice check”, which requires organisations to stability the possibly detrimental impacts of disclosure with the general public curiosity worth of the knowledge being launched.
“The exemption is certainly expressed in a approach that suggests that it has been accomplished in a blanket approach,” he mentioned. “That’s to not say that they haven’t utilized the unfairness ingredient, however there’s zero proof that they’ve. The exemption doesn’t apply in the event that they haven’t accomplished it.”
MRN and Storey additionally expressed comparable issues across the lack of transparency over the place the info is in the end saved, which they consider can probably be present in Amazon Net Providers (AWS) or Oracle infrastructure.
They mentioned that, as a result of the Dwelling Workplace confirmed to MRN by way of FoI in September 2024 that knowledge from its digital visa platform are hosted on AWS, it could possibly be the case that this supplier is getting used to retailer knowledge collected and processed by the towers.
Highlighting the truth that Anduril makes use of AWS Market to conduct assessments with LatticeOS for potential clients, MRN mentioned this means that AWS is used to host Anduril knowledge as soon as long-term contracts are formalised.
In accordance with the Market webpage, “Anduril Lattice Working System runs on a Kubernetes cluster hosted in EC2”, which is a cloud compute platform supplied by AWS.
Nevertheless, Oracle and Anduril even have a partnership to convey Lattice to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure globally. In accordance with an Oracle webpage, “Anduril will deploy Lattice on Oracle Cloud Remoted and Nationwide Safety Areas, that are Oracle’s air-gapped cloud infrastructure for mission-critical, labeled protection, and intelligence workloads. Lattice can even be obtainable in Oracle Cloud Areas, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud, and Oracle Authorities Clouds in Australia, the UK, and the US.”
Pc Weekly contacted each Anduril and the Dwelling Workplace for affirmation on the place knowledge collected by the towers is saved, however didn’t obtain a response from both.
MRN and Storey say they’re awaiting additional FoI responses associated to every of the towers recognized, which ask for particulars of any Knowledge Safety Influence Assessments, Equality Influence Assessments, privateness safeguards, data-sharing agreements and knowledge on the involvement of personal corporations.
Subsequent steps
MRN is encouraging individuals to take a variety of actions to problem the Dwelling Workplace’s use of surveillance towers, together with asking those that stay within the neighborhood of 1 to jot down to their native MP expressing issues, flagging the existence of additional towers to MRN or Storey, and organising native campaigns in opposition to the towers.
To know whether or not the info collected by the towers are getting used to affect or decide the result of asylum circumstances, MRN can be encouraging those who have crossed the Channel after June 2022 to submit topic entry requests to the Dwelling Workplace if they’re involved their knowledge might have been captured.
