How to Liquefy a Body on the Move: Eurodac and the Making of the European Digital Border Brigitta Kuster and Vassilis S. Tsianos 1 Introduction Using the example of Eurodac the following contribution concentrates on the digitization of European border controls. Eurodac, an information, communication and control technology, operates by means of a European database, in which the fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants are stored. Eurodac works as a so-called Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) and is applied within the areas where the rules of the Dublin III regulation are applicable. Dublin/ Eurodac were designed in relation to each other and in response to the crisis of the European asylum system, which was accompanied by the construction and the use of rather lax and crude terms such as “asylum shopping.” 1 The Dublin III regulation is based on the “polluter-pays” principle. It states that the Member State which has “caused” the entry of an asylum applicant (for instance by granting a visa or for lack of border security) should perform the asylum procedure. By using the Eurodac database to reconstruct the one and only responsible Member State per B. Kuster (*) Independant researcher, Berlin, Germany e-mail: brigittakuster@snafu.de V.S. Tsianos University of Applied Sciences Kiel, Sokratesplatz 1, 24149 Kiel, Germany e-mail: vassilis.tsianos@fh-kiel.de 1 Same as Dublin, Eurodac is a regulation adopted by the European Council on 11 December 2000 as a Dublin-based measure. A regulation does not require parliamentary approval, but can be initiated directly by the European Commission. The Eurodac regulation provided the legal basis for the establishment of an automated European dactyloscopic system that combines biometric identification technology and information technology solutions (Council Regulation (EC) 2725/ 2000). The Eurodac II Regulation from February 2002 provides the legal framework for the operationalization of the technical system. It includes rules for the administrative maintenance and for the implementation such as the age limit of those to be identified by fingerprints (Council Regulation (EC) No. 407/2002). # Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 R. Bossong, H. Carrapico (eds.), EU Borders and Shifting Internal Security, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-17560-7_3 45 brigittakuster@snafu.de