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- The Secretary of State for Migration should be able to systematically evaluate refugees’ mobile phones and tablets to verify their identity.
- The State Political Commission of the National Council (SPK-N) wants to create a legal basis for this.
- Swiss Refugee Aid and the UN refugee agency UNHCR criticize the bill.
Many asylum seekers cannot prove their identity with identity documents. In such cases, the Secretary of State for Migration (SEM) should be able to evaluate the mobile data carriers of those affected in the future as part of the asylum and eviction procedure. The SPK-N has submitted a corresponding amendment to the Asylum Law to the National Council, as announced by the parliamentary services. The decision was taken by 13 votes to 8 and 2 abstentions.
The template is based on a parliamentary initiative of the SVP National Councilor Gregor Rutz (ZH), which both committees have approved. In his reasoning, the initiator stated that a considerable number of asylum seekers enter the country without identity documents and therefore their identity cannot be proven. According to the federal government, up to four-fifths of asylum seekers in Switzerland cannot prove their identity with identification documents.
UNHCR criticism
The draft was easily approved in the SPK-N with 17 to 8 votes. After the consultation, the business is now more controversial. The minority of the SP and the Greens in the Commission, requesting not to present themselves to the bill, is mainly arguing about the data protection law. It also describes the interference in the fundamental rights of a data subject as disproportionate.
At the consultation, Swiss Refugee Aid (SFH) and the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, expressed their criticism. Both view the bill as a serious violation of privacy protected by human rights.
The bourgeois see more opportunities than risks
Most of the commission – representatives of the SVP, FDP and the parliamentary group of the center – like 24 cantons, see more advantages than disadvantages in the evaluation. The assessment of mobile data carriers is an effective method of obtaining information about a person’s identity. Also, the invasion of privacy is proportionate.
Under the bill, refugees would be obliged to hand over the relevant devices if the identity, nationality and route of the applicant cannot be determined in another reasonable way due to lack of documents.
Erasing data
It seems similar in other countries. Germany, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands have already created the legal basis for the systematic analysis of mobile phone and laptop data. A pilot project was run in the federal government from November 2017 to May 2018. In 15 percent of the cases, useful information was found on the identity or travel route of the refugees in question, according to the SEM.
The Commission has included recommendations from the comments of the consultation in its presentation, in particular with regard to data protection, as indicated in the communication. All personal data should be automatically deleted after a maximum of one year
The proposal is sent to the Federal Council for comments before it is discussed in the spring session of the National Council.
