Balancing privacy: national border security faces old challenges with new technology

Amy Szybalski

News Writer

Living in a country that shares the world’s largest unprotected border with the United States is not always easy. Illegal traffic and trade frequently cause major issues with security and personal freedoms for people on both sides of the border.

In a lecture entitled “Enhancing Border Security and Reducing Transnational Crime,” Dr. Margaret Kalacaka, Canadian International Council (CIC) Fellow and Assistant Professor of Geography at McGill University, presented this issue, highlighting the flaws in our system, as well as possible technological solutions.

Smuggling has always been a problem, and since 9/11 the various protections put in place have made travel safer, but at what cost?

People are more frequently delayed for unnecessary reasons while travelling, and Dr. Kalacaka shared both first and second hand experiences in which new security measures negatively affected travellers.

One experience involving one of Dr. Kalacka’s colleagues was quite surprising. As Kalacka recounted, “I have a colleague who did his PhD at the University of Connecticut, but he holds a Costa Rican passport. In order for him to travel to and from the United States when he was doing his fieldwork, he was required to hold a special visa for foreign students studying in the United States.”

“Because he had been studying for multiple years, he had multiple forms, and coming in from Miami, he accidentally gave the form that expired. The officer at that point had a choice: he could have said, ‘listen you have given me an expired paper, do you have a current one?’ But rather than doing that it was ‘you have to go through further inspection.’”

Following several hours of interrogation, he was allowed to go on his way. However, he missed his connecting flight.

“Personally my worst experiences have been driving into Canada,” Kalacka shared. “I remember crossing the border in my car, and having an officer try to ask me questions from quite a distance while I was approaching in my car.” Kalacka was searched when she failed to answer questions she had not even heard.

The amount of people being affected by this security treatment has only increased as paranoia has grown. With advances in security technology moving so rapidly, peoples’ privacy has become more of a concern.

Even though border security has increased at key patrolled border crossings, there are large distances between crossings where there is no viable way to control cross-border traffic, due to terrain.

Because of the unruly terrain, determined smugglers succeed more often in the trafficking of illegal drugs, weapons, and humans. New technology can help lessen these numbers, but without a large increase of manpower, the border crossings in these areas cannot be controlled perfectly.