Walls Have Eyes

Petra Molnar is a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in migration and human rights. She co-runs the Refugee Law Lab at York University and is a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Petra has crossed many borders and worked all over the world including Jordan, Turkey, the Philippines, Kenya, Colombia, Canada, and various parts of Europe. Petra’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Al Jazeera, Wired, The Guardian, and many other outlets. The author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, she splits her time between Toronto, New York, and Athens.

Praise for Walls Have Eyes:“A transnational, ethnographic journey to sites of migrant surveillance and boundary fortification, Petra Molnar’s The Walls Have Eyes shows how the sharpening edges of Europe link with biometric national ID cards in Kenya and Israeli-US security complexes.”—Public Books"A grave wake-up call."—Publishers Weekly"No other book illuminates the everyday violence of high-tech border technologies like The Walls Have Eyes. Molnar’s powerful storytelling bears witness to the stories of those who are navigating the hostile fault lines of this warming planet and to the machinations of those who profit from the displacement, surveillance, and dehumanization of vulnerable populations."—Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want"An incisive and terrifying look at how militarism, security, and AI create a dystopian present at borders."—Reece Jones, author of Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States"The border industrial complex is a billion-dollar business set to grow exponentially over the coming decades. The Walls Have Eyes is a compelling read, but also a warning about the world we’re entering where civilians with brown and Black skin looking for a better life are demonized, targeted, surveilled, and endlessly monitored. This book is a tool of resistance."—Antony Loewenstein, independent journalist, filmmaker, and author of The Palestine Laboratory "Petra Molnar’s The Walls Have Eyes is an unnerving look at the use of artificial intelligence for border surveillance—how governments and private business are forcing the most vulnerable and desperate of people through a virtual sieve, which captures bits of their being for profit and discipline. We are going to need another word to describe the horror that lies ahead, for dystopia now just describes everyday life. A must-read."—Greg Grandin, professor of history, Yale University, and author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America "A deeply empathetic, intelligent, and courageous book describing not only the myriad harms imposed by militarized borders, but the inspiring human will and solidarity that break through those barriers. Molnar has produced an intrepid and essential work documenting the dangerous cocktail of tech and xenophobia besetting much of the world today. She both sounds alarm on what the near future holds, and gives hope for a better way forward. This book is a critical intervention."—John Washington, author of The Case for Open Borders "This book paints a painful yet necessary picture of the present and future of technology at the border, and will hopefully shock us out of our collective complacency into collective action to defend some of the most vulnerable and unheard victims of the border industrial complex. Today’s border is not just a physical place but a series of connected technologies that are hardly understood outside those who develop them. The book is a necessary and crucial intervention into an overlooked area of study, practice, and human experience."—Nanjala Nyabola, writer and political analyst