The invisible border — how 9/11 reshaped global security and identity 25 years later

As the sun set on Friday evening, 25 years after 11 September 2001, it was difficult not to reflect on how much of what followed that day had become part of ordinary life.

Many of us remember watching the tragedy unfold and understanding, even then, that they would become a permanent part of history. What was less apparent was how profoundly the response to 9/11 would change the way countries approached borders, migration and, ultimately, identity itself.

Twenty five years later, those changes barely register. We hand over biometric passports, submit fingerprints, allow our faces to be photographed at immigration counters and provide personal information before boarding an aircraft. Increasingly, people also hand over biometric details in the course of ordinary consumer transactions, sometimes simply to choose a haircut.

This did not all begin on 11 September 2001. The securitisation of migration was already the subject of considerable academic study before the attacks. In 2000, political scientist Jef Huysmans wrote of the “social construction of migration into a security question”, tracing how migration in Europe had progressively become associated with public order, crime, terrorism and national identity.

The 9/11 tragedy did not trigger the securitisation of migration, but it surely gave that ongoing process an urgency, legitimacy and technological momentum that would have been difficult to imagine before those attacks. Borders have since extended far beyond the territorial line separating one country from another.

A border beyond the border

Border control increasingly moved away from the border itself. It extended into visa application processes, to the airline before departure, to advance passenger information, watchlists and interconnected databases, and ultimately into the passport itself through biometric chips, fingerprints and facial recognition. Increasingly, travellers are identified, checked and assessed before ever reaching the physical border.

In 2006, Louise Amoore described this as the “biometric border”, raising early concerns about the use of technology to distinguish between forms of mobility regarded as legitimate and those regarded as a risk, with the identity of the traveller becoming part of the assessment itself. Those concerns are considerably less theoretical today, following two decades of rapid technological development and the introduction of AI into systems of identification, screening and risk assessment.

More recent research has described this “shifting border” as a “transportable legal wall” capable of shrinking, expanding and disappearing whereby immigration controls have progressively become detached from the geographical border itself: moved outside national territory in some instances, and further inside it in others.

The physical border has not disappeared but has been pre-emptively reinforced. Ports of entry remain places at which considerable public power is exercised. Another border now operates around the physical one, made up of information and, sometimes, assumptions.

South Africa's biometric past

Keith Breckenridge has spent decades studying South Africa’s history of biometric identification. In his work on what he calls the “biometric state”, he reminds us that South Africa has a unique history of biometric control. Fingerprinting and centralised systems of identification were used here long before digital technology existed, including as instruments through which movement and identity were controlled during colonialism and apartheid.

That history gives South Africa particular reason to understand that identification can serve very different purposes. Reliable identification is necessary; it enables access to rights, services and benefits, it protects people against identity theft, and it helps government identify fraud and know who is entering and leaving the country.

The issue is not whether identity should be verified. The issue is what follows from that verification, what information is connected to it, and how decisions based on that information can be challenged when something goes wrong. These questions are no longer theoretical in South Africa today.

The invisible border takes shape

Last month Home Affairs formally launched its Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system at OR Tambo International Airport. An applicant scans a passport, uploads a photograph and undergoes biometric comparison. The system checks 40 different parameters to verify passport authenticity and conducts automated risk analysis. At the port of entry, facial verification is again used to compare the person arriving with the person to whom permission to travel was granted.

The system has not stood still since the launch. Within days, a processing fee of R500 came into effect, and the ETA has already begun opening beyond the four countries covered by its original pilot, with visa-exempt travellers now also able to apply. What began as a controlled pilot is rapidly expanding into a central part of South Africa's future immigration system.

Alongside this, draft regulations for South Africa's Digital Identity system were published earlier this year. The proposal allows citizens to hold digital versions of Home Affairs documents and remotely confirm identity using biometric verification.

These developments can solve real problems. Anyone who has dealt professionally with South Africa's paper-based immigration system knows the consequences of lost files, fraudulent documents, inconsistent records and processes dependent upon physical paperwork moving between offices. Digitalisation should not be treated with suspicion simply because it involves technology. But neither should technology be treated as an answer to every weakness in administration.

In his Budget Vote earlier this year, the Minister of Home Affairs said that this was all done “without any scope for discretion or manipulation”. Removing opportunities for corruption and manipulation is plainly desirable. Removing unlawful or arbitrary discretion is equally desirable. But discretion remains an ordinary and, in many areas, necessary part of administrative decision-making. Immigration legislation repeatedly requires officials to consider facts, circumstances, representations and statutory requirements before reaching decisions with far reaching consequences for an individual’s life and dignity.

A computer may be faster at identifying inconsistencies and considerably better at recognising a fraudulent passport, while also removing opportunities for an official to solicit a bribe; yet it can still act upon information that is wrong.

When the system gets it wrong

That is where the invisible border can become legally problematic. What happens when the passport is genuine but the information linked to it is wrong? What happens when a biometric match fails? What happens when a V-listing has been wrongly captured, never removed, or attached to the wrong person entirely? And, most importantly: Who answers for it?

Automating a decision does not alter the nature of the public power being exercised. Section 33 of the Constitution guarantees administrative action that is lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair. That requirement does not disappear because part, or even all, of the process has been automated. The State remains responsible for the decision, which must remain capable of explanation, challenge, correction and review, with accountability preserved throughout.

The most significant development during the 25 years since 9/11 may therefore not be that borders became more secure, but rather that they became less visible. The more invisible the exercise of public power becomes, the more important it is that the law remains visible, and government officials remain accountable. DM