Surveilling Europe’s edges: detention centres as a blueprint for mass surveillance

The beautiful Greek island of Samos, located just a few kilometres from Türkiye’ shore, is a place of contradictions. After arriving together with a group of excited tourists, I rented a car and began driving towards my hotel in the main city of Vathy. Within minutes, I spotted a military vehicle on the road — the first of many I would see during my stay. 

Historic tensions between Greece and Türkiye means that the Eastern Aegean islands, including Samos, are highly militarised. But they also play host to daily episodes of border violence against migrants trying to reach safety in Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. A recent BBC investigation alleged that some of them have even been deliberately thrown into the water by the Greek coastguard and left to drown.

For those migrants who do make it to Greek shores, detention awaits. Hidden in the hills of Samos, reachable only via car or local buses, lies the newest detention centre for asylum seekers, and thus Europe’s newest frontier: the Closed Controlled Access Center (CCAC). Inaugurated in 2021, the Samos CCAC, which has been described by human rights organisations as a “dystopian nightmare” and a “prison-like camp,” is one of five such centres in Greece, built at a cost of EUR 250 million to the European taxpayer.

When I approached the CCAC on Samos, I was struck by its sheer size. Stretching out for hundreds of metres, the centre is completely surrounded by a fence and barbed wire, the entrance is controlled by turnstiles, and surveillance cameras are everywhere. There is a palpable sense of being constantly watched. 

Surveillance technology is playing an increasingly central role in the EU’s approach to migration. Greece’s CCACs are already, or soon will be, equipped with a range of technologies, including automatic biometric identification upon entrance (for both for detainees and the centres’ workers), surveillance cameras supported by motion analysis algorithms that flag “suspicious” behaviour, drones to track movement from above the centres, and the automatic exchange of data with an operational control room in Athens. 

Greek digital rights organisation Homo Digitalis, the Hellenic League for Human Rights (HLHR), HIAS Greece, and Dr. Niovi Vavoula, an associate professor in migration and security at Queen Mary University of London, have together challenged the legality of these surveillance measures before the Greek Data Protection Authority, claiming that their installation not only breaches data protection safeguards, but also infringes on a wide range of fundamental rights. In April 2024, the Greek DPA fined the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum for violating the right to data protection when installing these surveillance technologies, but it is unlikely that this will prompt Greece to reverse its approach to migration, which aligns with the EU’s wider stance. 

Meanwhile, human rights groups and journalists struggle to access the Samos CCAC, so as to monitor the actual, often-degrading conditions in which people are being held or to provide basic, otherwise-unavailable medical care. Journalist Lydia Emmanouilidou was denied entry last year, and when I requested access from the Ministry of Migration several times in the month before my trip to Greece, I received no answer until the day I arrived; at which point my request was denied, leaving me without any ability or time to appeal.

Several Samos-based organisations have also called out the fact that the much-vaunted surveillance cameras never seem to be working during moments of aggression and violence allegedly perpetrated by camp authorities against people in detention. When human rights organisations have requested footage of events leading up to or during such instances, camp authorities and the prosecutor were either unresponsive to the requests or claimed the cameras were not working at those specific moments.

// How the camps’ technology is weaponised against other groups

While I was in Greece, 28 protesters, nine of whom were German, British, French, Italian, and Spanish nationals, were arrested and detained for alleged violent behaviour and disruption, following their participation in a pro-Palestian student encampment. The non-Greek protestors were transferred to the Amygdaleza migrants pre removal detention centre, where they were kept in degrading conditions for 10 days, before being deported.

This case shows how, once surveillance infrastructure is set up for one purpose, it is likely to be used for others. Surveillance measures, such as technology-enabled detention centres, will not be used solely against those society deems a threat currently, but can and will be repurposed against anyone it deems to be a threat in the future. Today, it is migrant people or pro-Palestinian protesters; tomorrow it may be environmental activists, journalists, or political opponents.

As I concluded my time in Greece and prepared to fly home, I noticed a EU-sponsored poster hanging in the airport’s check-in area, proclaiming that “Travelling is a right for all.” It is perhaps needless to say that the poster showed only white individuals, reinforcing the idea that safe travel is an option only for certain groups of people. It struck me that the digitalisation of border surveillance is another form of racial segregation — one which pushes already marginalised people further to the margins.

// What European policymakers need to know — and do

To prevent ongoing abuses of migrant people, and ensure the surveillance infrastructure used against them is not repurposed against other groups, EU policymakers must:

• Stop detaining and incarcerating migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers;
• Stop deploying surveillance technologies in migrant reception centres;
• Mandate transparency and fundamental rights impact assessments before any technology is deployed in a migration context; and 
• Re-focus EU migration policy around principles of safety, protection, and justice for migrants and racialized people.

Surveillance technology, a key enabler of the EU’s carceral approach to migration, is being deployed without respect for existing data protection and human rights frameworks or regard for due diligence processes. Any discourse around digital policies must focus on these edges, not only because it is where the greatest harm is taking place, but because what happens there will determine whether or not we all benefit from a just digital future. 

For any questions regarding this blog, please contact caterina@accessnow.org. If you or your organisation needs digital security support, please contact help@accessnow.org

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