The increasing number of travellers crossing European borders is putting a mounting pressure on the everyday handling of border checks. On one side, border control authorities have to process a higher number of checks in an increasingly reduced amount of time to avoid congestion or cope with limited resources. As a consequence, the experience of both European and third country travellers is deteriorating due to the extra time they have to spend at the border checkpoints. Such a continuous need has en resulted in calls for flexible, automated and scalable “no-gate” border security solutions. On the other side, the intensive use of technologies bears the risk of shifting the distribution of power between citizens, states and corporations, reinforcing mechanisms of exclusion, invading people’s privacy, and the societal and political acceptance of technologies for contactless border security solutions is required prior to their implementation.
A pivotal element of the PERSONA project is to design and establish a unified and tailored impact assessment method to appropriately assess the effects of new border-controlling technologies, ensuring that these solutions would meet the requirements and expectations of both governments, law enforcement agencies and border crossing individuals. PERSONA will carry out comprehensive assessment of the acceptability of a wide range of contactless crossing point technologies, taking into account human behaviour, gender, legal frameworks, privacy concerns, societal issues and potential risk of discrimination. The established method for assessment will provide important information for decision makers in the form of potential risks, mitigation measures and guidelines, in order to avoid that the innovation and deployment of future solutions by industry and border authorities inflict on fundamental rights.
