What is the ‘Border and Surveillance Industry’ and why does it matter?

6 May

The border and surveillance industry is a sprawling web of border, military, detention, tech and finance organisations that attempt to control people on the move. These various organisations work together and make their money by selling their services to governments (like ours in Australia) to prevent people from fleeing conflict, economic insecurity, and the effects of climate change. These products and services can include a range of technologies such as sensors, cameras, drones, satellite imagery, and AI tools to detect and prevent border crossings, smuggling, and security threats.

Although the border and surveillance industry is framed with the objective of national security and safety, it is much more sinister. The industry is continuing to expand into a complex ecosystem, despite a number of ethical issues which include privacy concerns, impacts on border communities and the associated costs. One arm of this industry is Australia’s widely reported offshore processing, which ‘manages’ asylum seekers attempting to reach Australia by boat.

Offshore processing, and by extension offshore detention, are a part of Australia’s strategy in externalising its border management to foreign countries like Nauru and Papua New Guinea to prevent asylum seekers from resettling in Australia. Australia’s offshore processing and detention policies have been widely criticised for a number of years by various human rights groups.

Offshore processing is here to stay

Learn more about what it is, and what its effects are

Fortunately, the detention centre in Papua New Guinea was shut down due to a ruling from Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court, resulting in Australia paying more than $70,000,000 in compensation to those that were illegally detained there.

Despite the Nauru detention centre having had issues around systemic violence, rape, sexual abuse, self-harm and child abuse, in 2022, Australia’s newly elected Labor government committed to continue the offshore processing of asylum seekers indefinitely. As a part of its new commitment to maintain this offshore processing on Nauru, the US based Management and Training Corporation, a company that was the subject of allegations of ‘gross negligence’ and ‘egregious’ security failures, was awarded a $47,300,000 contract for 62 days of work on Nauru.

Canstruct International, who had the contract before MTC from 2017 onwards ran up a bill of $1.82 billion over five years. And don’t even get us started on Serco (check out Episode 4 of the podcast if you really want to know).

Why does this all matter?

Canstruct, MTC, and Serco are just three of many organisations that are a part of the Border and Surveillance Industry.

While the Australian government is responsible for our border and surveillance policies, it is these companies that are lobbying, financing and profiting from the growth of the border and surveillance industry as border management continues to be increasingly outsourced.

Militarised language around asylum seekers and framing of migration as a security problem only perpetuates the growth of these industries and creates a justification for increased budgets for border and immigration control – you know, for ’national security’ reasons. The Financing Border Wars report estimated that the border security market is or will reach a value of around $65 to $68 billion by 2025.

The privatisation of borders and the outsourcing of border control means that while there may be a contractual obligation to the Australian government to treat people fairly and humanely, that obligation is owed to the Australian government – not the people detained. This could see an increase in severe human rights abuses of refugees and migrants, with less accountability for those in perpetuating this abuse.