Detained through a Smartphone

Abstract

The facial recognition software SmartLINK® is being increasingly deployed as an »alternative to detention« by ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), along with other surveillance technologies such as voice recognition and electronic ankle shackles. Rather than being a proper »alternative« to immigrant detention, these technologies have become an addition to the ever-increasing detention numbers, spreading confinement into immigrant communities and homes. These new forms of enforcement technologies constitute an understudied aspect of surveillance capitalism, as they are deployed with the active involvement of private companies with for-profit motives. This article draws on an experimental collaborative visual methodology enacted by an anthropologist, a design scholar, a lawyer and a participant with personal experience seeking asylum and being monitored through Smartlink. Together, we revisit visual material generated as part of ethnographic fieldwork on »digital confinement«. Using a walkthrough method, we proceed to conduct a collaborative analysis of SmartLINK®, its technological features, data generation, and cultural representations. Conducting research with someone who is constantly under surveillance through her cell-phone raises specific methodological and ethical issues, and in our article we call for participatory alliances and relational ethics when researching regimes of