Imagine an individual with a known criminal past has recently renewed his passport with a morphed image created by combining his own photo with that of another person without a criminal record. Submitting a morphed image is possible since applications for passport renewal allow applicants to submit their own photo, rather than performing live enrollment at the passport office. The criminal approaches a border and chooses the eGate installations for border crossing. Despite the presence of biometric verification tools at the border, the biometric verification is successful due to the morphed image. He passes unhindered.
This scenario describes one of many modus operandi that criminals employ in order to cross European borders undetected.
Trilateral Research joins 17 other partners in the D4FLY project which seeks to identify critical deficiencies in the current employment of technologies at EU borders, suggest solutions to these deficiencies, and develop new technologies that cannot be easily bypassed by criminals attempting to enter the EU.
D4FLY project impact
Over the course of three years, this EU-wide consortium intends to impact practitioners and service providers, policy and legislation makers, researchers both in industry and academia, and law enforcement agencies by helping to establish efficient and effective border security.
On the one hand, it is foreseen that the D4FLY technologies could hinder far-reaching criminal acts such as human trafficking that violate human rights and fundamental European values. Combatting document fraud can directly reduce the abuses and vulnerabilities, in particular of minors and women through trafficking and smuggling.
Simultaneously, we must proceed with caution to ensure that the algorithms and technologies utilized do not further entrench injustices such as profiling based on race, gender, or sex. With Trilateral’s lead, D4FLY will adopt privacy- and ethics-by-design methodologies in order to anticipate ethical and societal risks while supporting the successful design and development of the relevant technologies.
Additionally, Trilateral will develop ethical guidelines for decision-makers and border security officers thereby merging applied ethics, policy, and real-world scenarios.
For more information feel free to contact our team.
