Unpacking AI-enabled border management technologies in Greece: To what extent their development and deployment are transparent and respect data protection rules?

Abstract

This article embarks on a comprehensive examination of two research questions. The first question is “What are the AI-enabled applications, which are developed and deployed in Greece in the border management field?”. The goal is to provide to the reader a thorough listing of these technologies, as well as information regarding the companies that develop them, and the EU funding schemes that support them. By investigating this question, the paper assesses whether there exists transparent information regarding the procurement, development, and deployment phases of such AI tools in Greece, with a keen focus on the accessibility of related documents and data to civil society actors.The second question is “To what extent are the development and deployment of these AI-enabled border management applications in compliance with the applicable data protection provisions?”. There the goal is to register the different breaches of data protection provisions when such AI tools are developed and deployed in practice, taking into account the findings of civil society actors that have challenged the lawful use of such applications in accordance with the related national legal framework enforcing Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) and transposing the Directive 2016/680.