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Inside the Black Box of Predictive Travel Surveillance
Behind the scenes, companies and governments are feeding a trove of data about international travelers into opaque AI tools that aim to predict who’s safe—and who’s a threat.
A corporate spokesperson replied in an emailed statement that SITA could not comment “due to the confidentiality commitments it has made in the relevant contracts,” , but according to a position paper accessible on their website, the company’s “risk assessment capability enables a government to export its border to every single point on the globe where passengers can board flights, ships or trains bound for their territory.” Concerns about the use of AI-driven software to deny boarding to passengers was also flagged in a scathing report issued by then-UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, in December 2023. A 2022 op-ed that ran in the Border Security Report by Manu Niinioja from WCC, advocated for more “national targeting centres” that track all transport modes and combine traveler booking data with visa applications and facial recognition at the port of entry.
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