Technology, Control, and Surveillance in Australia’s Immigration Detention Centres

Abstract

Although mandatory immigration detention for “unauthorized” arrivals in Australia receives considerable attention, the use and abuse by government of technologies within sites of detention is less publicized. Control and surveillance are exercised in a number of ways. Immigration detainees have been denied adequate access to technologies that would enable them to fully communicate with family and friends and are deprived of the capacity to acquire information that can ensure their human rights are realized. At the same time that asylum seekers experience restrictions, devices are in place to control detainees through technological surveillance. Despite the prohibitions and impositions, detainees have adopted alternative means of communication in defiance of the limits foisted upon them.