How the Police Use AI to Track and Identify You

Surveillance is becoming an increasingly controversial application given the rapid pace at which AI systems are being developed and deployed worldwide. While protestors marched through the city demanding justice for George Floyd and an end to police brutality, Minneapolis police trained surveillance tools to identify them. With just hours to sift through thousands of CCTV camera feeds and other dragnet data streams, the police turned to a range of automated systems for help, reaching for information collected by automated license plate readers, CCTV-video analysis software, open-source geolocation tools, and Clearview AI's controversial facial recognition system. High above the city, an unarmed Predator drone flew in circles, outfitted with a specialized camera first pioneered by the police in Baltimore that is capable of identifying individuals from 10,000 feet in the air, providing real-time surveillance of protestors across the city. But Minneapolis is not an isolated case of excessive policing and technology run amok. Instead, it is part of a larger strategy by the state, local, and federal government to build surveillance dragnets that pull in people's emails, texts, bank records, and smartphone location as well as their faces, movements, and physical whereabouts to equip law enforcement with unprecedented tools to search for and identify Americans without a warrant.