A software developer has created a mobile app to alert users to Home Office stop and search operations, such as those reported on in our Issue 494 lead story.
Created by a group that calls itself ImmigrantX, ‘Stop & Search2’ asks users to report stop and search operations, the locations of which are then shared with other users.
An explanation of the app on the organisation’s website reads: “As an undocumented immigrant the stop and search poses an inherent risk to you.
“This way the alert can help you prepare and assess the danger the stop and search poses to you and by consequence your friends and your loved ones.”
The Government has been accused of targeting individuals based solely on their race and appearance. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is now currently investigating Border Force operations, as well as a controversial advertising campaign telling immigrants to “go home”. Immigration Minister Mark Harper denied people are being investigated on the basis of their race, but that officers’ activities were driven by intelligence.
Ian Dunt, editor of politics.co.uk writes of the software:
“The Immigrant X app is a practical, effective response to the UKBA spot checks which have been taking place in London recently. The operations themselves rest on a questionable interpretation of the Immigration Act 1971, via the 1986 case Singh v Hammond. Whatever else that legal precedent does, it probably doesn’t entitle authorities to do fishing expeditions away from borders.
The app is therefore a legitimate and law-abiding response to a heavy-handed and potentially illegal Home Office operation. It’s also further proof of the way mobile technology has handed supposedly-powerless communities the kind of ability previously enjoyed only by authorities.”
The ImmigrantX website features the following mission statement:
This is our manifesto, simple, without a plan, just an ideal for a better future and a statement of our resolve to do our best. We simply want to make the world a better place for all. We will do what we can with what we have to make it possible for immigrants to choose a place to live where they feel safe, secure and can make a future for themselves and their families. That means to us:
Your rights as a world citizen are not defined by your race, religion, place of birth, nationality or lack of. They are afforded to you by your existence.
Where ever you live on this earth you have the same rights as all those who live in your community not matter how or why you came to this place.
A law that is unjust should be disobeyed through ingenuity and creativity not by violence or hurt those we oppose or seek to help.
Demand for the Stop & Search app has exceeded expectations, according to the developer, leading to technical problems that it is working through.
