#225: Surveillance State: It's Here, Professor Rey Koslowski

How has border security evolved with technology? In this episode of the Open Minds Podcast, I sit down with Professor Rey Koslowski, a leading scholar on border control and migration.

I explore how AI, drones, biometrics, and facial recognition are transforming border management—raising both security concerns and ethical questions.

💡 Topics Discussed:

✅ The first border sensors from Vietnam War-era military surplus

✅ The 1990s border rushes & how enforcement changed migration patterns

✅ Post-9/11 security measures & the rise of global data-sharing agreements

✅ AI & facial recognition in border control—the role of Clearview AI

✅ Ethical concerns: How much surveillance is too much?

#BorderControl #Migration #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Surveillance #HomelandSecurity #USMexicoBorder #ImmigrationPolicy #Technology #Geopolitics

Transcript

Christopher Balkaran (00:00.999)
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Open Minds podcast. I'm your host Christopher Balkron. Folks, this one's really interesting. I have with me Professor Ray Kozlowski, prominent scholar in border control tech, highly extensive research on the evolution of border controls and the integrations of information technology in border control and border control management. We're gonna talk about all of that and as a Canadian,

I am very excited to talk to an American about their issues because although we're neighbors to the North, it feels like it's a whole different world down in the United States on their southern border in particular. There's a really great research that I'll leave in links below to Professor Koslowski's work. One that I found, which is really interesting is, quote, the integration of advanced tech into border control systems represents a paradigm shift.

Transforming traditional practices and challenging existing policies. Professor, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited for this conversation.

Rey Koslowski (01:08.284)
Happy to join you.

Christopher Balkaran (01:10.633)
So Professor, I want to start with the evolution of border control tech. Can you tell the audience just a little bit of how it's evolved and what new tech the United States is using today that it wasn't, say, 20 years ago?

Rey Koslowski (01:12.558)
Thank

Rey Koslowski (01:25.838)
Well, you have to think about it in several ways in terms of how one understands border control, right? So there are the means of gathering information about, and I'm going to also make a point here that there's border control. It's about the movement of people, but also goods, right, across.

borders and it's customs and border protection, the agency. This is very important. I myself am a migration scholar. I tend to focus on the people automatically. But a lot of what goes on is actually about the conveyances that cross borders, the people and the goods in those conveyances. Then we have at the ports of entry or the border crossing points,

Christopher Balkaran (01:57.545)
Right.

Rey Koslowski (02:22.454)
and then between the ports of entry. And that's usually what people are talking about the border. The US border patrol agents out there in the desert between ports of entry. That's what's in people's minds mostly, right? But there's a lot more to it, right? It's also information about the people and goods and conveyances coming to the border and what kind of information.

Christopher Balkaran (02:38.623)
Yeah.

Rey Koslowski (02:51.628)
Now there are also all kinds of borders, land borders, sea borders, air, again, if we start thinking about the whole issue. So I'm going to kind of give you the broad picture here, then you can zero in on the parts that you're most interested. So it's before it's at the border itself, whether at ports of entry or between ports of entry.

And I would just say in terms of starting, the US Border Patrol has a museum outside of El Paso. And in the museum, I got to visit some years ago, they've got this sensor, early sensor from, I think it's like 1972 or something like that, or early 1970s that had been deployed. And this sensor, again,

And many of these things were military surplus, in that case, military surplus from the Vietnam War. So that's kind of a starting point.

Christopher Balkaran (03:59.803)
Wow, very interesting. And so what did that sensor say and do? What was its purpose and how did it evolve since then?

Rey Koslowski (04:12.162)
Yeah, very much. you think about it this way, technology has been thought of by the border patrol as a, in a sense, the term that's often used is force multiplier, right? So to be able for individual border patrol agents to have greater visibility of the border, to be able to detect when people have crossed the border.

And so these sensors would, again, detect movement of people crossing the border, for example. A lot of the technology, is, and Border Patrol will point this out, is also rather low tech, know, sign tracking, like being able to identify footprints and broken

vegetation, et cetera, to know that somebody has crossed the border in an open area of desert, which of course, much of the border in Arizona, for example, is. so that's, that's if you think about the mission, right? So there have been deployments of sensors and then video, and all of these are tools to get visibility on the border.

And then, of course, there's aerial surveillance, both manned and unmanned vehicles, UAVs, or unmanned aerial systems. UAS is the term that Customs and Border Protection use. And again, these are all ways in which the Border Patrol can get a idea of what is happening at the border.

or what has happened recently to be able to establish routes, et cetera, and places to deploy Border Patrol agents.

Christopher Balkaran (06:18.207)
Professor, can imagine over the years with all this data that's being collected and certainly to your point recognizing that it is challenging determining if it's a human or an animal or something else crossing into the border, there are trends and patterns that show themselves. I'd love to know from your research what you've seen that are indicative of trends and patterns of migratory border crossings

into the United States through land border crossings in particular.

Rey Koslowski (06:51.192)
Well, okay, so there's a bit of history on this and the patterns have less to do with technology per se. So, but let me put it in kind of strokes here, broad brush. So, quite frankly, up into the, through the eighties or so, it was really relatively easy to cross into the United States from Mexico, right? You walk in.

Christopher Balkaran (06:52.957)
Yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (07:17.854)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (07:19.694)
if you were going to cross the Rio Grande, maybe somebody would help you out with taking your clothes across so they wouldn't get wet and you wouldn't be easily identified, maybe $50, $100 to do that. In the early 1990s, what was happening, there was a phenomenon of where there were groups of people, 150, 200, I think.

Christopher Balkaran (07:33.46)
Whoa.

Rey Koslowski (07:46.232)
as many 250 people who would simply rush the border at the San Ysidro crossing, right south of San Diego. And there would just be so many people who would just rush it that, you know, at that time it was the Immigration Naturalization Service folks at the border crossing couldn't catch people. I mean, they would run right up the highway sometimes or the border patrol around that area. couldn't, you know. So was a tactic, right?

to get in. So the Clinton administration in the early 1990s, 92, 93, 94 started to say, okay, we're going to build up the deployments of Border Patrol 100 yards apart in urban areas, right? Because the urban areas was where people could just

you know, rush across and then there are houses and they could mix in with the local population, right? So there were more border patrol agents deployed in those urban areas. And then what was, and this was done primarily in California, again, south of San Diego, and then El Paso operation, hold the line, it's called, and

San Diego Operation Gatekeeper. And also we saw the use of more kind of military surplus from the Iraq War putting up fencing, all right, fences. They were using like these big metal sheets, these landing sheets. I forgot exactly what the metal, what they called landing, they weren't pads or something like that, right? They'd stick them up. And the idea was to simply use these

Christopher Balkaran (09:36.212)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (09:44.61)
things to slow people down so that they would have a better chance of apprehending. So what happened? It became harder to cross at those built up areas, right? And what you saw is that the cost, the fee to be smuggled into the United States went from a couple hundred dollars to your, you know,

maybe $200 or so to $600, $700. It cost more. And the smugglers were channeling, were saying, okay, it's harder to cross in these areas. So now they were crossing more through the Sonoran Desert through into Arizona. And so that's the way it evolved, right? So, you you've got...

Christopher Balkaran (10:32.212)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (10:38.246)
Think about squeezing the analogy that was often used as squeezing a balloon, right? Squeeze here and the flows move elsewhere. And it was really kind of at that time that we saw the first term of the George W. Bush administration to really say, we're now operating in the desert. We need to utilize more tools, better tools.

Christopher Balkaran (10:48.03)
Right.

Rey Koslowski (11:07.822)
to be able to identify, see night vision, because people are crossing at night, putting up more sensors, more videos, and let's face it, technologies, this is the IT revolution that occurred in the late 1990s, early 2000s. And so that's where you saw more more deployments of sensors and of video.

And then the Bush administration actually, they put out a call for something called the Secure Border Initiative. And that was the idea of a virtual fence. Boeing got the bid up. were a lot of subcontractors. And the idea was to build these towers, right? That would have all of these video cameras.

sensor nets, etc. And this was going to basically be all the way across the southern border where there wasn't physical fencing. And of course there would still be on that physical fencing similar technology used. That was the idea.

Christopher Balkaran (12:25.129)
Professor, is like, as a Canadian, this is extremely fascinating, this evolution. You mentioned in the 1980s, like you could just like literally walk across the border.

Rey Koslowski (12:34.019)
Hmm?

Rey Koslowski (12:39.662)
Sure, it was kind of like walking across the US-Canadian border up until the 9-11 attacks. But then it didn't change that much. I mean, it used to be the case before 9-11. There'd be a traffic cone on the road, rural road. People would drive, move the traffic cone. Yeah, yeah, I mean, come on.

Christopher Balkaran (12:44.306)
Wow.

Christopher Balkaran (12:49.577)
Right.

Christopher Balkaran (13:02.015)
This is wild, Professor. Now, I wanted to ask you because like my rudimentary understanding of, you know, Cuba and Cuban exiles was, you know, if you land two feet in the United States, there's a lot of provisions that the United States government provides Cuban exiles, etc., leaving the Castro regime with the southern border from

Rey Koslowski (13:23.342)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (13:29.343)
Mexico and Central Americans coming into the United States, I could understand some wanting migration for labor demand in the United States. Was that ever something that politicians in the US were like, you know what, there's a labor need, we're really not going to patrol the border as much because there actually is a need for cheaper labor? No.

Rey Koslowski (13:39.598)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (13:52.75)
Well, okay. Well, maybe we should start in 1924 when the Border Patrol was founded, okay? The Border Patrol was not founded to catch Mexicans. No, no. It was primarily Chinese and Eastern Europeans who were coming through Mexico. But Southwestern...

Christopher Balkaran (14:07.273)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (14:20.142)
Southwestern US farmers and ranchers relied upon seasonal Mexican labor. And then with World War II, there was the Bracero program, temporary migrant workers. But even during the time of the Bracero programs, there were also additional unauthorized workers coming. And so this has been a part of

Christopher Balkaran (14:27.527)
Yes. Right.

Rey Koslowski (14:48.738)
The American economy, again, there was an immigration policy that meant that people would have to go through ports of entry. It's just been a part. then if you look at the 19.

Christopher Balkaran (14:56.617)
confederation.

Christopher Balkaran (15:06.514)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (15:17.71)
know, 52 Immigration Naturalization Act, right, where we finally get a set of laws to govern immigration consolidated. And in that, there was a provision for what was referred to as harboring aliens. It was against the law to harbor aliens. But then Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Texas delegation in the US Congress

said, wait a second, no, no. Employers cannot harbor aliens. So they were exempt from that, essentially. It was called the Texas Proviso. So it meant if there was an individual helping an unauthorized migrant cross a border or something along those lines, they could be prosecuted if they helped them out in their house or whatever. But if somebody employed an unauthorized migrant, no.

Christopher Balkaran (15:56.03)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (16:11.261)
Right.

Rey Koslowski (16:16.622)
they were exempt from any legal penalties. All right? And that didn't change until 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act that imposed employer sanctions for knowingly hiring someone who was not authorized to work in the United States. Okay? So, kind of to get back to understanding the

Christopher Balkaran (16:20.414)
Wow.

Christopher Balkaran (16:39.485)
Wow, that is so interesting.

Rey Koslowski (16:45.634)
the dynamics here and about, I'm going to leave aside the Cuban issue, because that's talking, this is now about asylum. That's a different, whole different kettle of fish. But you've got to think about it this way. In 1996, there were approximately 1.5 million apprehensions, right? Okay, that's our individual acts.

One person could be apprehended several times in a year attempting to cross the border. And of that number, there were only 25, 26,000 people who were not Mexicans, they call them, other than Mexicans, OTMs, right? 1.7%. Okay, so the vast majority of people who were crossing a southern border were mostly...

Christopher Balkaran (17:16.927)
Right.

Christopher Balkaran (17:32.946)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (17:43.052)
you know, relatively young Mexican, mostly men coming to work, mostly in the Southwest, but then to a certain degree, Chicago and a few other cities. But, you know, that's who crossed. And it was pretty much, you know, I think...

pretty much except for 2005, it was below the other than Mexican, right? So 90 % of the apprehensions were of Mexicans up until about 2010. All right? So the vast majority of people, again, Mexicans were coming, working, you know, and it was the vast majority again of the unauthorized migrant population too.

Christopher Balkaran (18:24.445)
Wow.

Christopher Balkaran (18:41.331)
Professor, this is so interesting. So thank you for that history context, because that really does set the scene, I think, to your earlier point about there were then about 200 rushing the border. Can you explain to me again, as a naive Canadian, what started this quote rush? Were there economic considerations? Were there demands?

Rey Koslowski (18:55.043)
Yeah.

Rey Koslowski (19:00.27)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (19:06.454)
Again, I would just say it's part of the economy. Think about it this way. And even now, there are about, I know, somewhere in vicinity of 11 million unauthorized migrant workers and some

I think about 8.3 are employed, 8.3 million are working in the economy now. And again, is back in 1996, it was about 6 million unauthorized migrants. And again, it's been the case that there are industries farming, absolutely picking all the fresh vegetables, fruits, et cetera.

construction, janitorial service, all of these sectors of the economy that employ unauthorized migrant workers. And it's been this way for decades and decades and decades. And again, if we just look at the Southwest and agriculture, it goes back to 19, you know, over a hundred years ago, all right? And has been the case since then.

Christopher Balkaran (20:30.45)
Yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (20:36.647)
And this is actually a good pause for folks who are listening. I recently did a deep dive on the H-1B visa program that the United States has. it's not just Mexicans. mean, the information tech sector benefits greatly from the H-1B visa program, which fast tracks people from South Asia, mostly India, as software engineers, software developers.

Rey Koslowski (20:52.91)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (21:05.599)
And you know, Facebook has paid, I think the DOJ did an investigation of Facebook's exploitative measures towards H-1B visa holders of paying them under, underpaying them. And they settled out of court 14.25 million. And so it's this rush for inexpensive labor that is the consistent through thread.

Rey Koslowski (21:15.758)
Sure.

Rey Koslowski (21:30.51)
It's a part of our workforce, our economy. And it's bad. Yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (21:36.415)
Right, right. So interesting, Professor. I wanted to move on to information tech and integrating this with border management. So one thing that I found, a really good quote from your research is, the move towards integrated border management reflects a comprehensive approach combining tech, policy, international cooperation.

Rey Koslowski (21:49.251)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (22:04.093)
to enhance security and facilitate legitimate travel. So the question I have for you, Professor, you mentioned the 1972 sensor. It's like, as you just talked about, there is a necessary component of this to the economy. Why then would there be this integration of information tech to really monitor human migratory patterns when there's a demand for it?

Rey Koslowski (22:28.43)
Okay, this now we're gonna switch gears a little bit from border control by the border patrol between ports of entry to at ports of entry, at airports, seaports, et cetera. And we, and perhaps a good point of departure is to think about

Christopher Balkaran (22:42.185)
Yes. Yes.

Rey Koslowski (22:55.992)
how technology has changed and how more and more people are traveling, all right, and can travel. It's cheaper, big jet airlines and all. And then the 9-11 attacks, right, in which that globalized travel had been in a sense weaponized by a set of terrorists who took control of airplanes, individuals who had been in...

the United States legally, primarily on visitor or as business travelers. And then took advantage of that situation to commit a horrendous act of terrorism. Then after that, the United States of course said, my gosh, how could this happen?

part of it was the way in which visas were being issued. The fact that Saudi nationals, the vast majority again, of the hijackers, the so-called muscle, they were Saudi nationals and they were viewed as low risk precisely because how many Saudi nationals are gonna go work, you know, in kitchens and...

Christopher Balkaran (24:18.419)
Hey.

Rey Koslowski (24:19.746)
picking vegetables, right? They're not coming to the United States. So they're low risk for overstaying their visa and working without authorization. And that was the way that up until 9-11, the whole issue of visa issuance was viewed. Is this person going to go back at the end of 90 days or whatever the term of the visa will be? And so.

Christopher Balkaran (24:24.148)
Yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (24:31.465)
Hmm.

Rey Koslowski (24:46.798)
There were whole host of efforts to tighten up the process by which visas were issued, the technologies used to communicate, to have watch lists for potential bad actors, we use criminals or terrorists, cetera, so that they would be denied visas. So this is within the State Department. And then, know,

Part of the issue was we had a very siloed government with the INS, Immigration Naturalization Service. And actually as the story goes anyway, the day that George W. Bush heard that two of the hijackers, two of the pilots had their visas for vocational.

education to go learn to be pilots approved. Again, this is after the attack. When he heard about that was the day that he said to abolish the INS. And that was the beginning of the whole idea of not beginning, the saying we're going to set up this new Department of Homeland Security because it was all siloed. And the information that the FBI had

Christopher Balkaran (25:51.293)
Wow.

Christopher Balkaran (25:57.264)
Wow.

Christopher Balkaran (26:06.226)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (26:13.122)
didn't make it to the immigration inspectors to stop some of the hijackers to enter, for example. So this is where information technology played an important role within government to overcome those silos. And so the State Department could share information about who's getting visas.

The law enforcement agencies the FBI federal law enforcement could share information so that a You know an immigration inspector customs inspector at an airport Could say wait a second, you know, let me check this person take the person in secondary and then find You know relevant information to make an arrest for example, right so The or just at least not let the person in all right. I mean so that's what

Christopher Balkaran (27:03.892)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (27:08.302)
I was referring to there. And now here's the thing though, is that the United States was at that time, you know, asking for all sorts of information. So for example, immediately after there was a passenger name record, right? So the passenger name record, that's when, you know, you go book a plane flight, you know, on, I don't know, kayak or whatever, some Expedia or whatever.

or directly with an airline and you're giving information, credit card information, what kind of, you know, special meal you want, vegetarian, halal, whatever, right, for example, all that data. And that's in your passenger name record. And US customs basically said all airlines, we want all the passenger name record data, okay? Like that.

Christopher Balkaran (27:50.207)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (28:02.856)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (28:06.784)
Otherwise, well, we're just going to have to rip open everybody's suitcases. All right. So suddenly, of course, a lot of airlines complied, right? The problem was European airlines were subject to European data protection rules. So it took many, many years until the United States and the EU could negotiate an agreement on passenger name record data and how that would be shared.

Christopher Balkaran (28:11.231)
my god.

Rey Koslowski (28:36.236)
So here's the thing, and the point that I want to get across here, and I made back then is that all this technology might be very useful, but you need to have the data to use it. And getting the data requires international cooperation. And one of the things that's happened over time since 9-11 is that more and more states, they're

Christopher Balkaran (28:36.777)
Wow.

Christopher Balkaran (28:49.929)
Yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (28:55.048)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (29:05.326)
Customs, immigration authorities, border control authorities have increasingly been cooperating to share data. So as to allow people to fly and to do that with less risk. I mean, there is always going to be risk, but that's been the objective. it's been quite frankly, you know, working if you look at the total number of

Christopher Balkaran (29:14.217)
Hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (29:26.301)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (29:37.102)
International Tourist Arrivals, the World Tourism Organization publishes this and you know, we're talking about billions of people are crossing borders every year. And, and, you know, we have not seen another 911 type attack style mass casualty event using airlines, right?

Christopher Balkaran (29:46.483)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (30:06.067)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (30:07.04)
And so in many ways, they've been very successful, I would say. And again, the number of travelers has continued to grow. And it was really the economic downturn, 2008, 2009, the global recession that led to one dip, and of course, the COVID-19 epidemic. But otherwise, the line is increasing.

Christopher Balkaran (30:34.975)
Professor, I think more people need to listen to your research and your work because this is truly fascinating. Professor, I'm struck. You mentioned something about what happened after 9-11 and the Patriot Act. We didn't chat about that, but the Patriot Act, I think, gets to a lot of what you're discussing. I remember reading Stanley McChrystal's Team of Teams.

And Stanley McChrystal went into Afghanistan at the time thinking, this is going to be easy. We'll wipe out the Taliban. It'll be over. Al Qaeda is done in and out in 18 months and it's over. And then he slowly realized that al Qaeda means the base and how they operated was a series of networks and nodes that even if you took out the senior leader in

a region in Afghanistan did not change the network of modes or nodes that exist across Iraq and Afghanistan. And so one thing that he found was the US military at the time was so ill equipped to deal with this network slash node mode of fighting. And he took a lot of those lessons back and now the military is much more agile at

Rey Koslowski (31:55.32)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (31:56.933)
addressing a threat like that. And so as you were speaking, I was thinking, I wonder if that was the entire purpose to expose the apparatus of entry points into the United States, because clearly it seems like it was intended to highlight what you've just discussed. You know, it's not, I mean,

Rey Koslowski (32:22.414)
What do you mean? What's it when you're saying that right now? What do mean by it?

Christopher Balkaran (32:25.639)
Yeah, so like when I think of 9-11 and what happened...

Rey Koslowski (32:28.77)
The attack itself was to, yeah, but to, I don't understand, to put a light on US border, I mean, controls?

Christopher Balkaran (32:31.845)
Certainly it was an attack on the United States 100%.

but also.

Christopher Balkaran (32:41.479)
Yes, because the reason I say that, know it's a big stretch, but because what happened after 9-11 was the Patriot Act and this massive apparatus of government. think in total...

Rey Koslowski (32:51.884)
Well, hold on a second. I'm just going to say, I think you're way off base here. I I really don't think the intention of Mohammedana was, we're going to show the weaknesses of the United States immigration. Now, they had an idea of the planes plot that had been brewing to take down the World Trade Center and to do that, to show perhaps, if you will, the weakness of the United States and

Christopher Balkaran (32:55.512)
Yeah. Really?

Christopher Balkaran (33:04.286)
No.

Christopher Balkaran (33:19.742)
Yes.

Rey Koslowski (33:21.806)
et cetera. I don't think they had that sophisticated a view of our, you know, immigration controls per se. I would say though that there were certain features that al-Qaeda, and this is in the 9-11 commission, I'm going to see here, I'm an academic, I can't help myself. I'm going to recommend readings. So the 9-11 commission,

Christopher Balkaran (33:44.383)
You

Rey Koslowski (33:50.63)
at its report, right? But they also had another report on terrorist travel. And this really, it's an incredible work. And it explains how all the various hijackers acquired the tools they need to get into the United States and using fraudulent documents and pass, that's another thing that Al Qaeda had a whole passport office. mean, so there was a degree in which

Christopher Balkaran (34:07.539)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (34:19.724)
terrorist organizations develop kind of countermeasures to border control. And by the way, on tech, same thing, the cartels, they invest in countering US technologies too with their own. So the thing I would suggest and probably part of the problem and what you're pointing to in terms of McChrystal,

is that all too often, whether it's the military or border control officials, cetera, is there's a fairly static understanding of the opponent, right? And, we just need this technology and that's going to fix the problem, whatever it is. But hold it.

It's moving. It's a moving target. Things are changing, including the technological environment. Right. That's another thing. say like, you know, take the mentioned drones and you were interested in the article on drones and, know, the United States, again, the Border Patrol starts utilizing predator drones for surveillance and at all. But guess what? The cartels, they're

buying cheap small drones and using that to surveil the border patrol officers and where they're at. And oftentimes, governments are building the, mean, SBI, the Secure Border Initiative, ended up becoming a billion dollar waste of money. I don't know, they put up.

Christopher Balkaran (35:58.943)
Mm-hmm, right.

Rey Koslowski (36:18.702)
maybe 25 or 30 miles of these towers and whatnot. Because again, the situation changed, the technology changed, yet it took so long for the contracting approach that some things were obsolete, other techniques were being developed by the smugglers. And it just...

it just took so long for them to, and they didn't even ask the border patrol how they would use it. And they had so many, the users of the technology. So there were all these different problems that are typical in any technology deployment by a company or whatever that were in a sense magnified. This also,

happens and continues to happen. And whether it's countering terrorism. Here's another one. Here's another issue you mentioned, al-Qaeda. Well, there's a different kind of travel with ISIS. And it was travel from Europe to Iraq and Syria. We had an ISIS attack in New Orleans. And here's someone who may have

Christopher Balkaran (37:31.775)
That's right.

Yes.

Rey Koslowski (37:45.312)
may have not even had any kind of actual contact with an ISIS cell, but was radicalized by things that he found on the internet. again, it's, know, generals fight the last war, same thing happens in border patrol and migration management.

Christopher Balkaran (38:07.667)
Professor, where I was going with the comparison with General McChrystal was the paradigm shift that was spurred on by fighting Al Qaeda, the network, the node module that they utilized. When I think of the 9-11 attacks and I think of the security apparatus that happened after that, that was a pivoting moment for the United States. I think you would agree with that on how it approached

Rey Koslowski (38:15.96)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (38:29.73)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Christopher Balkaran (38:35.583)
immigration, border security, et cetera. And the investments that went into it, SBI you mentioned was not the best investment, but certainly if you include both wars, mean, we're talking in the trillions of dollars of investments. so that, again, I'm not saying Mohammed Atta had that foresight to think that way, but I think what Al-Qaeda saw was lacking border security measures that could be

Rey Koslowski (38:38.158)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (38:55.246)
Understood.

Christopher Balkaran (39:05.567)
infiltrated or something like that because, right, and you mentioned the cartels using drones and I feel like sometimes the US or just any government's trying to catch up to what other actors are doing to infiltrate their communities.

Rey Koslowski (39:09.273)
sure.

Rey Koslowski (39:23.302)
I'm kind of sure they saw weaknesses. mean, in terms of the planning, here, get this, you know, Egyptian in Germany, you know, are a student who, I mean, of course, these are individuals who are not going to be considered threats. That was the planning, absolutely. And, but again, you know, and the real change is that

Christopher Balkaran (39:31.997)
Yes, exactly.

Christopher Balkaran (39:46.044)
Yeah.

Rey Koslowski (39:51.842)
how one perceives visa issuance. It's not a matter of, you know, somebody coming to take someone's job. The criteria change forever. Yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (39:59.133)
Right, right, exactly.

Christopher Balkaran (40:04.103)
And it also spurred, you mentioned ISIS and Europe. I can't help but think that after 9-11, it actually spurred the G7 to come together and build international treaties and agreements about, as you mentioned, flight records and flight tracking and things like that.

Rey Koslowski (40:14.294)
sure.

Rey Koslowski (40:20.524)
There was the Madrid bombing, there was the UK, I mean, there were other attacks. And that brought not only the G7, but the United Nations, Security Council. So there are a whole host of vehicles for international cooperation, including the Global Compact on Migration, right?

Christopher Balkaran (40:23.049)
or rack.

Other attacks, certainly.

Christopher Balkaran (40:31.807)
Right.

Christopher Balkaran (40:44.756)
Right.

Rey Koslowski (40:46.09)
If you actually look at it, you'll see that a whole host of the provisions on biometric data, on data sharing, are actually to secure travel. there's specifically combating human smuggling, combating human trafficking. Quite frankly, that particular compact has less to do about, in my view, increasing

Christopher Balkaran (40:53.129)
Yes.

Christopher Balkaran (41:07.369)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (41:15.202)
the amount of migration worldwide and has a whole lot more to securing international travel. Yet at the same time, if the United States didn't enter into that, the Trump administration didn't sign on, the Biden administration did. And I'm waiting now for the new Trump administration to withdraw from that. So again, part of the issue here is that

Christopher Balkaran (41:23.507)
This is.

Rey Koslowski (41:45.142)
I will just, our time is fleeting, I know, but I want to make this point here on this. And that is that in so many ways, the reality of border control, again, at ports of entry, at border crossing points along borders, et cetera, has been border control has become globalized in that states

Christopher Balkaran (41:47.431)
Yes. Yes.

Rey Koslowski (42:14.978)
their border control agencies need the cooperation of other states to share data. And the neighboring states also cooperate. The United States and Canada, country agreement, for example, the United States has been cooperating with Mexico to beef up its southern border for a long, long time too.

Christopher Balkaran (42:35.421)
Yeah. Yep.

Rey Koslowski (42:44.13)
So these are the kinds of things that have been happening for a while and then increasingly information-laden world in which we travel and this all requires that kind of information sharing. Otherwise states fly blind in trying to secure the borders.

Christopher Balkaran (43:08.475)
That's a really good segue, Professor. I had a whole section on biometrics, but I understand we are short on time. want to... No. No, I love it. I love these exchanges. I think it's so important for this topic and this conversation. I just wanted to end our conversation on the ethics behind a lot of this. I know we've chatted before we hit record about ethics and the policy implications of border controls. We've talked about the...

Rey Koslowski (43:14.274)
I'm sorry, I turned the drone on a bit on a few things, no pun intended.

Christopher Balkaran (43:36.969)
collection of data and the sharing of data. Certainly, the United States, for those less familiar, there's the Fourth Amendment that does allow for privacy and things like that. So there's a bit of this gray area when it comes to collecting data and sharing it. Here in Canada, we had the case of Maher Arar, who was wrongly accused of having links to terrorist organization, was sent to Syria, was tortured, later sued the government.

Rey Koslowski (44:06.766)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (44:06.781)
successfully and a lot of things happen. Anyways, all that to say, what do you see as some of the major ethic issues about sharing private data and how can governments regulate themselves from making sure that information is staying sensitive and upholding the Fourth Amendment?

Rey Koslowski (44:29.58)
Yeah, well.

So the bottom line is that any government can ask any individuals coming to cross into their sovereign territory for all sorts of data. I don't have any rights in a sense. I can be completely searched. I can be asked for all sorts of data.

You can ask to look at my cell phone if I want to, you know, mean, literally, I, to come to Canada or another country, right? I have a choice. I don't, I could say, no, I'm not gonna give my data and I don't come in, right? So the rights, if you will, really stop to one's nationals, all right? So this is how this has worked where the United States, for example, after 9-11 again,

the US, it was called US visit, so the biometric entry exit program, so they demanded, right, you've got a 10 fingerprints picture and initially a lot of these things were resisted because people didn't want to do that and they stopped traveling to the United States. know people who are academics who say, I'm not going. Eventually things changed and they did, but leave that aside. But these were...

Christopher Balkaran (45:36.639)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (46:01.41)
these kinds of owners data collection, but you know what? Look what's happened now. I mean, this is years ago when I was at a store and I saw some 18 year old putting a finger on to open up the register, the cash register that they were working, right? I said, well, wait a second. He said, yeah, I need to do that, right? Disney World uses biometrics and biometrics instead of a ticket, for example. Your cell phone now people, you you open up.

Christopher Balkaran (46:28.286)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (46:31.214)
It's the norms around sharing personal data. I mean, you know, let's face, I'm an oldster. I have a very different view of these things. But younger folks, you know, believe me, I look at their Facebook pages and it's sharing way too much information, right?

Christopher Balkaran (46:58.271)
Right.

Rey Koslowski (47:00.6)
So I think part of the issue is that there's also been a type of change in terms of norms. And here's the thing, everybody worries about, government, big brothers, US government's gonna take the data and guess what? US government, the FBI, et cetera, they have big budgets to buy data. So they're buying it from the private sector. There are so many aggregators that...

Christopher Balkaran (47:24.703)
Yeah.

Rey Koslowski (47:29.014)
are scraping up data about people and that's how they get a lot of it. They don't need to go through all of the hassles of court orders, et cetera. I mean, there are certain kinds of data, phone taps, I guess, if anybody's still using a landline. I mean, there are certain things, but what I'm getting at is that some of the issues that surrounded that have

and sense evaporated with changing norms about what people share now in the United States anyway. That's my sense of where things have gone on that. I think with aerial surveillance with drones and using them along the border, there are concerns about how drones might be flying in people's backyards, et cetera, and that's come up a little bit. I don't know how to put it, but I

Christopher Balkaran (48:02.451)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Balkaran (48:22.793)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (48:28.43)
I think it's become less of an issue than it was 10, 15 years ago.

Christopher Balkaran (48:34.559)
Professor, I want to end this conversation by asking you what you foresee as the future of privacy in this increasingly shareable digital age, because I was watching a recent announcement by the Trump administration about more data centers for this AI revolution that they're undertaking. And I can only imagine that data collection is going to amplify 1,000x over the next five to 10 years.

Rey Koslowski (49:00.885)
yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (49:03.487)
What are your thoughts of that? I know you're not a constitutional expert, but love to know your thoughts on privacy, Fourth Amendment, where our privacy rights and where the government's rights or data collection begin.

Rey Koslowski (49:15.51)
Mm hmm. Yeah, you know, I got to tell you the thing about, and here's where I get really a bit afraid of things in the technology that is available. And that is that you've got a certain kind of convergence of drone technology, sensor technology, 5G

mobile networks, artificial intelligence, and very importantly, facial recognition technology. So you've got advances in computing power and batteries and material science. It's making it possible to build drones that can fly longer, they're easier to operate, and they can carry more weight while at the same time becoming much less expensive.

Christopher Balkaran (49:46.526)
Yes.

Rey Koslowski (50:14.604)
And then you've got these sensors with ever greater resolution. don't know, Google Argus IS a video surveillance system sometime. And this is something that BAE Systems had developed. It was a thing on science. It was amazing. This sensor mounted on a drone could see objects just six inches wide.

Christopher Balkaran (50:27.359)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (50:41.15)
and track every moving object within 36 square miles. And this is several years ago that this was out there. So I could imagine where there are going to be surveillance drones that could really pick up quite a bit of information. And then you've got all these 5G networks that were all

using now they're 100 times faster than the 4G mobile networks. And what this also means is that it could make it possible for mobile phone controlled consumer drones to transmit high def video transmission of a whole lot of things and numbers, you looking into people's backyards. Yeah. Yeah. And with high resolution and

Christopher Balkaran (51:32.712)
Wow.

Christopher Balkaran (51:37.865)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (51:37.986)
Then you go take a look at something like the EU has this row border project. And this is all a project that was a research project. How can we integrate all of this drone technology, new technologies for border control? mean, it's amazing what they thought of there. So it's the integration of these. Then you add in.

Christopher Balkaran (52:01.31)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (52:06.122)
artificial intelligence with large databases of facial imagery that can be collected. The Chinese have been doing this incredibly well now because they have a lot of cameras and are using this for the social credit system. But here's the thing, border control authorities could potentially use the same kind of systems with facial recognition. And then

Christopher Balkaran (52:22.815)
Mm-hmm.

Rey Koslowski (52:35.434)
Here's the thing too, is that already a lot of US law enforcement agencies are using this system called Clearview. It's the Clearview facial recognition app. basically what that does is it scrapes some three billion publicly available images from Facebook, YouTube, and millions of other websites, right?

And then it allows law enforcement officers to basically run a photo or video frame of an unknown suspect and say, aha, here's the Facebook page. So that's already there. think this is old here, the figures that I have 600 law enforcement agencies that are already doing this.

Christopher Balkaran (53:15.856)
Wow.

Christopher Balkaran (53:20.745)
Yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (53:26.183)
Wow.

Rey Koslowski (53:30.19)
And then you get the Facebook page or LinkedIn page or whatever you can get the address, blah, blah. I mean, that's the nature of law enforcement increasingly now. And I'm sure that it's going to be utilized more so for border security and migration management too. So.

Christopher Balkaran (53:50.355)
Professor, yeah, you just mentioned Clearview. just Googled it. The company's algorithm matches faces to a database of more than 20 billion images collected from the internet, including

Rey Koslowski (53:59.47)
Up to 20 billion from 3 billion the last time I looked at this a few years ago, okay?

Christopher Balkaran (54:04.143)
my goodness. And that's from that includes social media. And so, wow, this is wild. And you also mentioned, I just had it up here, the Argus IS, the autonomous real time ground ubiquitous surveillance imaging system. For those that don't know, it's an advanced camera system using hundreds of cell phone cameras in a mosaic to video and auto track

Rey Koslowski (54:09.742)
yeah. yeah.

All right.

Rey Koslowski (54:18.595)
Yeah.

Christopher Balkaran (54:33.135)
every moving object within a 36 square mile area in HD. This is wild, Professor.

Rey Koslowski (54:40.674)
Yeah. And this is years old, several years old. Yeah. So all I'm saying is that the technology is available to do things that a lot of people never dreamt could occur. And the law enforcement implications are there. And if we want to think about this in terms of civil liberties and civil rights and

Christopher Balkaran (54:44.647)
Yes, this is seven years old. Insane.

Rey Koslowski (55:09.72)
due process, et cetera, we have to think about these capabilities that are available and how they should be managed.

Christopher Balkaran (55:20.777)
Professor, that is the perfect cliffhanger for our subsequent conversations because this was such a treat, Professor. Thank you so much for coming on the Open Minds podcast. think everyone who's listening to this when this gets posted is going to write me to have you back on because you've really whetted my appetite to learn more.

And I do think that there's real merit in understanding the way forward and what, where our rights begin again and where governments end, et cetera, et cetera. think this is an ongoing conversation. So I'd love to have you back, Professor. But again, thank you so much for coming. I will link your research in the comments below. Folks, if you haven't already, check out Professor Kozlowski. I will make sure that your work is promoted as much as possible.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Rey Koslowski (56:16.824)
Well, thank you very much for your interest in my work and I've enjoyed our conversation.