Show Notes
Shownotes Episode 5
Transcript available HERE Content Note: This episode mentions children in immigration detention and residential schools.
Borders have long been sites of colonial enforcement about who can come and go and how Indigenous peoples are treated. Canada is no exception. Increasingly, governments look to technology to make potentially life-or-death decisions about whether a person fleeing danger should be allowed to cross a border. What happens when that technology reinforces bias and makes unreliable choices?
Author and activist Harsha Walia leads us through how borders came to exist and how Canada has used them to keep out "undesirables" from the country with tools like the Safe Third Country Agreement. We connect with Joy Henderson, an Afro-Indigenous person whose own experience with the oppressive power of borders means they're unable to claim status in Canada. We chat with Jamie Duncan, a PhD student and researcher about how deploying artificial intelligence at the border can reinforce systemic racism in some disturbing ways. And finally, Petra Molnar, a researcher who authored a report with Citizen Lab at the Unversity of Toronto, explains her work on how the border is often a test site for invasive surveillance technologies on asylum seekers.
Take Action
Canada: End the Safe Third Country Agreement – Amnesty International Canada Further Resources
Canada: Leading human rights groups challenge Safe Third Country Agreement at Supreme Court – Amnesty International Canada
REPORT – Canada: Abuse, Discrimination in Immigration Detention – Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International Canada
BOOK – Harsha Walia “Border and Rule”
REPORT – Bots at the Gate: a human rights analysis of automated decision-making in Canada’s immigration and refugee system – Petra Molnar
Migrant Rights Network
Canadian Council for Refugees – Safe Third Country Agreement
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More from Rights Back At You
Shownotes Episode 3 Transcript available HERE. Content note: this episode contains mentions of sexual violence “I feel like people would have cared more… about this injustice if I had just died.” - Rowa Mohamed Rowa Mohamed showed up to support her neighbours at an encampment eviction and was injured by police during the protest. Her experience of violence is not unusual – Black Muslim women are often treated with suspicion, like they don’t belong. What happens when people “fight crime” with home surveillance technology and treat their own neighbours as suspects? We chat with Hannan Mohamud about the surveillance of Muslims and the proposed “barbaric practices hotline”, connect with Ottawa’s Coalition Against More Surveillance and the resistance they’re engaged in to stop proliferation of surveillance technology in their neighbourhoods, and finally we connect with Dr. Chris Gilliard who walks us through the pitfalls of luxury surveillance and how doorbell surveillance cameras threaten our human rights. Further resources:
Content note: episode contains mentions of death, injection drug use and brief mention of suicide around [4:02] - [5:46]
Content note: brief description of death by police around [19:15]-[19:40]
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.