Technology fails asylum seekers

Blocked websites and outdated ICT facilities continue to hinder the education and potential social integration of refugees and asylum seekers incarcerated in Sydney’s Villawood detention centre.

One Villawood detainee told Computerworld the current communications facilities on offer are insufficient and the centre’s 18 computers are slow and difficult to work with.

“There is [sic] a lot of blocked websites,” the detainee said. “I can’t even type properly with the current computers — if I type something, it will come up in the screen after five minutes.”

A contract for the provision of services at Villawood was awarded to services company, Serco Australia this year. As a result, the provision of Internet connectivity and IT equipment changed hands.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) confirmed Serco will also take on the provision services at other detention centres.

The detainee said that in October, Pentium 4, 1.7 gigahertz computers put in place by the former service provider — G4S Australia — were replaced with less powerful, 500 megahertz processor machines.

Although the detainee can access email and Facebook, the websites cannot be utilised 100 per cent because the connection is very slow, he said.

“The new computers are worse than before. All the time it is not comfortable to sit in front of the Internet, I am waiting for computers [to load].”

Detainees cannot use USB keys, making it difficult to maintain contact and share documents with their lawyers and other people on the outside.

“We’ve already complained for one month. They promise to fix it but we already wait for one month, but [there has been] no progress at all, they’ve done nothing about the computers,” the detainee said.

The comments reflect the findings of an 18-month study titled, Technology’s Refuge by Dr Linda Leung, a senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) Institute for Interactive Media and Learning, which looked into the use of ICT by refugees and asylum seekers in their country of origin, during flight and displacement, and in settlement.

According to Leung's research, asylum seekers expressed an urgent need to contact friends and family back home, and to correspond with lawyers, police and government bodies upon reaching Australia.

“For refugees and asylum seekers, technologies are very intrinsic to their survival, to their displacement, and to their settlement,” Leung told Computerworld.

The study took place in 2007 and 2008, with Leung interviewing people who had spent time in an Australian immigration detention centre. It revealed asylum seekers experienced difficulty understanding and using technologies and struggled to maintain contact with family and friends both in Australia and their home countries.

“The lack of technology and communication options available to [asylum seekers] in detention was associated with emotional distress,” Leung said.

The issue of blocked websites was also highlighted in the study; one interviewee suggested several websites and social tools freely available to Australian residents were inaccessible.

“It’s been very hard because with the Internet here it’s blocked, some of the websites they have blocked. Say for instance, they have things like educational websites; websites related to anything to do with foreign nation situations. Anything to do with research or anything is blocked, and we only have access to the basics like the newspapers within Australia and the email and the chat. But sometimes the chat when you try to access it’s blocked too,” an asylum seeker addressed as “Mr A” said in the study.

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Leung said stringent conditions were placed on the use of Internet when it was introduced the into detention centres, which led the asylum seekers to depend more on mobile phones. This trend, however, has become increasingly problematic as the pace of technological advances quickly outdates regulations.

The detainees, for example, are forbidden to use mobile phones with cameras or recording devices attached.

“They’re having to use very old model phones and it’s getting increasingly harder to supply them with those, because as the phones actually upgrade and become more sophisticated [the rules don’t change],” Leung said.

Several large mobile phone providers confirmed only a hand full of devices are available without camera technology. Optus, for example, does not sell any.

DIAC said it is aware of concerns about the speed of the Internet and blocked websites raised by detainees, and that it is working with residents and services provider, Serco, to resolve the issues.

“Internet filters are in place at all detention facilities to block access to pornographic and offensive websites,” a DIAC spokesperson told Computerworld. “Occasionally, though, these filters inadvertently block non-offensive foreign language websites.”

The department also said all Villawood residents have their own password-protected hard drive on which they can store personal data and that the mobile phone camera restriction is to protect the privacy of residents.

An asylum seeker, addressed as ‘Mr R’ in the UTS study, accused the policies of trying to keep asylum seekers in the dark.

“So there’s this control in detention centres that people are kept in the dark and they are not allowed any technology to use or know what is happening. Because we were curious about what was happening outside Australia, what people think of us...”

The Villawood detainee who spoke with Computerworld said detainees will keep up the fight for access to better Internet and communications technology.

Serco Australia did not return requests for information.

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