Activists crash Capita’s annual meeting to protest GPS tracking contract • The Register

We understand that Privacy International and several other campaign groups have pitched camp ahead of Capita’s annual general meeting in London yesterday to protest Capita’s involvement as an outsourcer in a UK government GPS tracking contract.

The groups, which drove a billboard van to the London shareholders’ meeting and distributed leaflets outside, claim the government’s electronic tagging project amounts to “racist surveillance”. Nasrin Warsame, policy and research coordinator at Bail for Immigration Detainees, claimed the outsourcer is “facilitating” this by providing services for the Department of Justice to “non-British – including asylum seekers and people born and raised in the UK”. track down.

Warsame added, “We call on Capita to take a principled stance and make these harmful policies obsolete.”

Privacy International has previously complained that the UK Home Office and the MoJ continue to “invest money into acquiring GPS tags to monitor migrants … despite the fact that only 1 per cent of migrants escape the immigration bail”, and in so doing relied on statistics obtained by the company via a freedom of information request [PDF].

Immigration is subject to criminal law, which means that someone charged with breaking a rule, even if they have never committed a crime, can be punished.

Privacy International informed us that “Anyone can be flagged without a residence permit, regardless of whether they have committed a crime or not.”

Lucie Audibert, a lawyer for the organization, added that those accused of criminal offenses – which she says “could actually include violating immigration laws” – fall under the “mandatory duty” of Schedule 10 of the Immigration Act 2016. which requires the Home Office to electronically monitor all foreign offenders subject to deportation proceedings (unless they are under 18 or there are human rights reasons not to do so).”

She added: “Furthermore, the Home Office may decide to tag anyone who does not have a residence permit, whether or not they have committed a crime, if it grants them an immigration bail bond and decides that the tag is useful, to ensure that the person complies with their bail conditions or if they believe that person poses a threat to public order.”

The charities say that Capita’s provision of GPS tracking services “enables the Home Office to monitor the location of non-British citizens as part of its environmentally unfriendly immigration policy”.

A Home Office spokesman told us: “Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should have no doubts about our determination to deport them.”

“Where immediate deportation is not possible, electronic surveillance can be used to manage foreign offenders and selected others released on bail.”

“Electronic surveillance allows for more effective contact management of individuals so that they comply with their immigration requirements on bail pending deportation.”

According to human rights, children under the age of 18 and pregnant women are not allowed to be tagged.

A 12-month pilot project [PDF] has been in place since June 2022 last year to test whether electronic surveillance is an ‘effective’ way of maintaining regular contact with asylum seekers entering the UK ‘through unnecessary and dangerous routes’.

Harmit Kambo, Campaigns Manager at Privacy International, added: “Capita PLC claims to be a purpose-driven company, but what purpose is it to subject non-UK citizens to 24-hour surveillance? It is criminal, controlling, unnecessary and has serious human consequences.” Impact on rights: The government is already under investigation and is facing various legal claims.

Kambo said, “Companies should not blindly benefit from such hostile policies.”

We reached out to Capita for comment.

The outsourcing giant has operated electronic surveillance services for the Justice Department and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) since 2014 after winning the prisoner tagging contract after a previous contractor, rival outsourcing giant Serco, was embroiled in a fraud scandal . Its outsourcing competitor has been fined more than £22million ($27million) for allegedly overcharging the MoJ. The Serious Fraud Office said its investigation found that the contractor claimed to have monitored offenders in the community who were already in prison, had fled the country or were dead.

After Capita won a six-year contract to tag with the MoJ in 2014, work on the project was extended by three years in 2020.

Capita already handles an enormous range of multi-million pound government contracts and has been named one of the UK’s ‘strategic suppliers’ to its public sector by spending research firm Tussell. “Strategic suppliers” are companies that do so much business with the government that the Cabinet Office is concerned with managing procurement with them, which means the numbers are more accessible as they sell directly to the public sector. For example, Microsoft’s numbers are mostly indirect sales through distributors and resellers. According to Tussell’s research, the UK spent £938 million ($1.2 billion) on various technology deals with Capita in 2021, although that was a 12 percent drop from 2020.

As for the MoJ’s tagging program, there is controversy that it will soon include face scans. The Home Office and Justice Department want to get migrants with criminal convictions to scan their faces up to five times a day using a smartwatch running facial recognition software. The MoJ awarded the contract to British supplier Buddi Ltd in May last year.

Capita had sales of £3.01 billion in fiscal 2022 [PDF], with a pre-tax profit of £61.4m. The outsourcing flagship told the exchange in March this year that its business process services (BPS) had “created value”, adding that UK government spending on private organizations was around £176bn and spending on BPS by around 5 percent increase per year. It added: “As Capita has won and delivered more digital transformation and IT engagements across the public sector, the UK Government now considers us a digital service provider alongside providing traditional outsourced workspaces.” ®