Biometric Technology at the Borders of Citizenship 341 government can identify them; the whole point of this operation is to spare their previous records for being used by the new government for persecutory purposes stemming e.g. from tribal-ethnic rivalries and community disputes owing to the migrant’s affiliations with the previously dominant clan and ruling class. On a more operational take, onboarding devices should be waterproof and heatresistant as a minimum, and onboarding mobile stations should possibly be fireproof as well. Translation options shall be available from/to the six official UN languages and those most widely spoken by the regional staff of international organisations as well as local cross-border authorities – also accounting for and drawing on relevant legal provisions in cognate fields such as disaster recovery or diplomatic protocol. Extremely sophisticated recognition of synthetic faces and the like should be ensured: once confined to the realm of science fiction, these wearable silicon skin appliances are a widespread reality nowadays, and especially popular among smugglers, war criminals, and undercover governmental agents. Indeed, it is widely documented that large migratory flows are exploited by top criminals to clear their records and transplant their criminal undertakings elsewhere, as well as by secret services to access jurisdictions off-radar. In designing these technologies, programmers should avail themselves of all the most accredited standards already being developed for remote digital know-yourcustomer (e-KYC) solutions, including cybersecurity and proof-of-authenticity protocols (Arab Monetary Fund 2019, PwC 2016, The Paypers 2020; Pic, Mahfoudi, and Trabelsi 2020). Additionally, they should consider making them compatible with satellite-delivered Internet, which is slightly slower and more expensive compared to cabled Internet, and subject to potential weather-dependent temporary disruptions, but it provides wider coverage, and – of special importance here – it stands less subject to political whims (cabled Internet and cell networks can be and indeed are switched off more easily by authorities – Feldstein 2022; Guest 2022; Vecellio Segate 2024, 336) in situations of spontaneous unrest and protest, which are so inherent to migratory management and especially characteristic of detention facilities for “unlawful” migrants. In the case of asylum seekers at high risk of retaliation, in particular, Internet networks powering onboarding stations should be as proprietary as possible, refraining from relying e.g. on public unprotected Wi-Fi hotspots for the transmission of sensitive identity data. Nevertheless, the political limitation is that States would expectedly not allow the release and even less the official adoption of such privacy-upholding technologies, which would need to be informally placed onto mobile carriers by NGOs and transported wherever needed while defying security checkpoints. Another aspect to take care of regards the technical “updatability” of onboarding solutions in order to stay compliant with higher requirements or more streamlined