1/2Border-control technology － The invisible boundary The Economist Feb. 16, 2019 国境管理、通関、出入国管理
New systems could make hard frontier disappear, but the level of background surveillance would be uncomfortable
It is an all too familiar scene. Long queues of people and vehicles waiting to cross a border, paperwork all in a flutter and stony-faced customs officials rummaging through belongings and peering into the back of lorries.
A question on many minds is whether technology can do away with such perturbations. An the answer is yes. New systems are making it easier to cross borders on land, at ports and in air terminals. Within a few years it should be possible, at least in theory, for a border to become invisible. People and goods would flow through without stopping, leaving all formalities to take place electronically and out of sight.
This might appear the ideal answer to the seemingly intractable problem of the nature of the border between Britain and Ireland when Britain leaves the European Union. Neither side wants the return of a “hard” border of physical infrastructure, with its associated security and customs checks. But retaining an open border would impose legal constraints on Britain’s freedom to change its laws in ways that diverge from the EU’s. To many on the British side, this would be tantamount to keeping Britain in the EU.
If technology could make the border invisible on the ground, leaving legal checks to be done elsewhere, that might satisfy most parties. Yet as promising as the technology to do this is, in practice the cost of fully deploying the kit required for an open border is likely to be expensive, and the accompanying level of electronic surveillance too high for to stomach, especially in Ireland.
Paperwork damned
Despite these concerns, a number of borders around the world are being modernised with new technology, in order to become more open. The starting-point is taking the “paper” out of the paperwork. Documentation involved in shipping goods from one country to another is going virtual. Electronic customs declarations are being made easier to submit, allowing the pre-clearance of shipments and the online payment of tariff.
Switzerland, for one, aims to digitise its border procedures with the EU fully by 2026. A SFr400m ($400m) programme known as DaziT will provide a central online portal for all customs services. This will, for instance, let travelers use smartphones and tablets to declare foreign purchases on which duties may be owed.
The security of such systems is likely to be protected by blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. A blockchain records transactions on a decentralised register in a way that is difficult to tamper with. Last May Singapore introduced electronic certificates of origin, based on blockchain, for goods travelling into and out of the country. The system, developed by vCargo Cloud, a local firm, allows a mobile-phone app to be used to scan a QR code, a fancy type of matrix bar code, attached to the goods in question. The app will reveal the certificate.
Singapore’s busy port, along with ports in Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Philadelphia and other places, have started to use a blockchain-enabled process called TradeLens. This is the result of a collaboration between Maersk, a big Danish shipping firm, and IBM, an American computer firm. TradeLens provides access to a range of electronic data tracking shipping containers and their contents for importers, freight forwarders, port operators and customs authorities.
One of the advantages of using blockchain is that it readily reveals if things have been tampered with. Every time a code or a sensor attached to goods is scanned, that event is logged in the blockchain and tagged with other data, such as the location of goods. But no system is foolproof, so authorities will want to ensure that whatever crosses their borders is what the data purport it to be. Hence some sort of facility for physical checks will still be needed.
