The home office is operating at least eight artificial intelligence (ai) -Powned surveillance towers along the south-east coast of england, which critics say are constributing to mind English Channel.
As part of a project to map the state of England's coastal surveillanceThe Migrants Rights Network (MRN) and Researcher Samuel Story Have Identified Eight Operational Autonomous Survelance Towers Between Hastings and Margate Where People seeking asylum via the channel often land, and two more that have either been dismantled or relacited.
In response to their freedom of information (Foi) Campaign, The Home Office Itself has also tacitly acknowledged that Increased Border Survelance Could Place Migrants Crossing The Channel in “Eveen Greater Jeopardy”.
Created by us defense company anduril – the elvish name for aragorn's sword in The Lord of the RingsWhich translates to “flame of the west”-the 5.5 meter-tall maritime syntry towers are fitted with radar as well as thermal and electro-optical imaging sensors, enabling the detection of ” Other Water-Borne Objects in a Nine-Mile radius.
Underpinned by Lattice OS, An AI-Powered Operating System Marked Primarily to Defense Organizations, The Towers are Capable of Autonomously Piecing toge toge Collecteds Collecteds of Differentry Sources (such as sensors or draones operated by anduril) to create a “Real-time undersrstanding of the environment”,
As of April 2025, MRN and Storey have identified anduril towers at Fairlight Coastguard Station, Dungeness lighthouse, Hythe ranges east lookout, Shornclife army camp, Capel Le-Ferne Cliffs, Dover Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, Walmer and Kingsdown Golf Cluband Ramsgate port,
While A ninth has been identified just outside utdd ranges near jury's gapand a 10th at hythes ranges west lookout, MRN said these have either been dismantled or relacited.
Increasing Militarisation
It added that the tows represent a “Physical marker of where the hostel environment begins”, Contribute to the Increasing Militarization of Borders and Push People ITO Taking More Danger Routes.
“The towers are not neutral. They are active agents in an increasing system of border apartheid designed to filter, categorise and reepel that deemed as 'undesirable',” Unded MRN, “Saiding Thight in the Constraxet Uk's forthcoming the Border security bill -which seeks to give border Authorities Countter-Terrorism-Style Powers to Deal With Migrants-People seeking safety are Increasingly framed as a aus Dehumanization.
“These towers and their ai algorithms do not make seeking asylum safer,” it said. “They enforce border apartheid and exclusion: acting as a first port of entry into the uk's digital hosal environment. Drones Raise Important Questions About The Potentially Deadly Consequences For Migrants, Thei Should also make also make us question the wider encroachment and normalization of surveillance Day-to-day lives.
“Ultimately, surveillance is being implemented without consent, and we have a right to demand transparency and the ability to scrutinise this technology, and What it means for human rights.”
For storey – who has Created and released a film Based on his research into the anduril towers – the biggest remain question is whats collected by the towers is used to determine asylum cases and whipther, in the context of the upcoming border Security Bill, IT Could be used as evidence in criminal protruscutions against migrants.
Computer weekly contacted anduril Regarding the claims made about its autonomous surveillance towers, but received no accessgement or responsE by time of publication.
Computer weekly also contacted the home office about every claim made in the story – Including how data generated or contained by the trowrs is used in asylum cases – but Similarly Received NO RESPONSE BY TIME of Publication.
The Threat to Migrant Safety
MRN said that Although the home office has been reluctant to share details of the towers on the basis that it could assistant “Organized criminal gangs”, it has tacitly across Border surveillance presents to the safety of migrants.
“Disclosure of the requested information could aid the criminals seeking to facilitate these Danger Enabling them to develop counterviling activity to increase their likelihood of success, support their planning and inform new tactics and routings, ” it said In Response to one of Storey's Foi Requests.
However, it also noted that, if details about the towers were also revised, “Migrants may be placed in even jeopardy by making them less easy to detect by uk and freench patrols engaged in safety of Lifety of Life At Sea (Soolas) Operations ”.
As a result, the home office decided to apply a section 31 law enforcement exemption on everything on the request, which allows state autorities to withhlet information if it is “Likely to prejudice… the operation of Immigration controls ”.
Heightened Danger
According to mRN, despite the department's resistance to transparency, the home office's response to storey clearer identifies the impact that incredible border surveillance has been done: ” is no secret that increases surveillance and policing at borders Pushes migrants into more remote and dangerous crossing points While Forcing them to Increasingly relay on Intermediaryies (So-Called People Smugglers). “
Noting that a record number of people lost their lives attempting to cross the channel in 2024 (as reported by the Un'S Missing Migrant Project) – As well as The high death-also at the US-mexico borderWhere the Electronic Frontier Foundation Has Mapped 563 Such Survelance Towers – mrn added that as autonomous surveillance technologies within “Increasingly embedded ALONG The English Coastline, The English Channel May Emerge as Its Own Letter Fortier”.
It said this process has alredy happy at the US-mexico border, Where the towers form part of a deterrence infrastructure designed to push migration routes into more “Rugged and deadly terrain”, and which has been to notable increases in migrant mortality.
“It is not different to realise that uk government has utilized these towers as part of a border apartheid strategy, employing this ai surveillage assemblage to further Militarise the sourterise Border, ”it said.
Drawing Comparisons Between Us and Uk Border Practices, Storey Added that Survelance Towers Dotted Remotely Along Survelance Towers in the UK – which can be found in plain sight in relatively Quant English Landscapes – Are Framed Around Humanitarian assistance of migrants.
However, he added that give this frameing – As well as the Vast Array of Technologies State Authorities Can Leverage to Surveil An Area As Small as the English Channel – It begs the question of why people are still dying.
“What's the Technology Really Doing? It's ostensibly being used for humanitarian purposes, but is it actually successing in what they're claiming it doing?” He asked, adding that the obvious solution would be for the uk government to open safe and legal routes to the uk, instead of relaying on expensive technology soch as ai to “Eneforce a border a border a burder that is ai Out who are in desperate need ”.
Transparency and data storage concerns
While the Financial Times Covered the Home Office's anduril Contract when it was announced, mRN and storey said there has been licked there Transparency, even in Response to Fois.
Specifically, they cited a lacked a lacked of information on contrast details, the location of the towers (which have been manually identified and logged by storey), the data sharing beginning theorements and logged by storey, and How the information collected by the towers may be used to determine asylum cases for that crossing the channel.
So far, the only contrast details have been confirmed in an foi response from the home office to resarcher anna christoforou, which reviewed that it anduril contract – CCTC: Common Operating Picture and Command Interface – is valued at £ 16,087,370, and runs from 22 June 2022 to 22 June 2025.
Storey said that, from his experience, the Foi System is more about opacity than transparency, and trying to Open up information on border and immigration issues In Particular is like a “game of cat and mouse” with the home office. “It's extramely obvious they don't really have any Internation of Actually disclosing information that would lead to proofr public awareness, discourse, transparency et cetra … Having a public discussion about this surveillance of people, “He said.
Commenting on the application of the law enforcement exemption to the information requested by storey, independent data protection and foi consultant Tim TOM TOUNER TOUNER TOLD COMEKLY Weeklice Department did not complete a “Prejudice Test”, which requires Organizations to Balance the potentially detriental impacts of disclosure with the publish interest values of the information coming release.
“The exemption is definitely expressed in a way that implies that it has been done in a blanket way,” He said. “That's not to say that they haven't applied the prejudice element, but there's zero evidence that they have.
MRN and Storey also expressed Similar Concerns Around the Lack of Transparency Ever Where the Data is Ultimately Stored, which they belive can Most Likely Be Found in Amazon Web Services Oracle infrastructure.
They said that, if the home office confirmed to mrn via foi in September 2024 that data from its electronic Visa platform are hosted on AWS, It Cold Be the Case The Case This Provide used to Stores Data collected and processed by the towers.
Highlighting the fact that anduril makes use of AWS Marketplace to Conduct Tests with LatticeOS for Potential Customers, MRN Said This Indicates That Aws is Used to Host anduril Data to be up to Formalized.
According to the Marketplace Webpage, “Anduril Lattice Operating System Runs on a Kubernetes Cluster Hosted in EC2”, which is a cloud compute platform offered by.
However, Oracle and Anduril also have a partnership to brings lattice to Oracle's cloud infrastructure globally. According to an Oracle webpage“Anduril will deploy lattice on Oracle cloud isolated and national security regionsWho Oracle's Air-Gapped Cloud Infrastructure for Mission-Critical, Classified Defense, and Intelligence workloads. Lattice will also be available in Oracle cloud regions, Oracle eu sovereign cloudand Oracle Government Clouds In Australia, The United Kingdom, and The United States. “
Computer weekly contacted bot and the home office for confirmation on where data collected by the towers is stored, but did not receive a response from eather.
MRN and Storey Say they are awaiting furter Foi Responses Related to Each of the Towers Identified, which ask for details of any data protection impact assessments, equality impact assistants, principal Safeguards, Data-Shaking Agreements and Information on the involvement of private companies,
Next Steps
MRN is encouraging people to take a range of actions to challenge the home office's use of surveillance towers, Including Asking asking there who live in the vicinity of one to everything to their locality Concerns, Flagging the existence of further towers to mRN or storey, and setting up local campaigns in opposition to the towers.
To understandless white collected by the towers are used to influence or determine the outcome of asylum cases, mRN is also encouraging those that that have crossed the channel AFTER RECONEL AFTERNEL AFTERNEL AFTERNEL AFTER Subject Access Requests to the Home Office If they are conserned their data could have been captured.