It bills itself as the largest gathering of police chiefs in the United States, where leaders from many of the country's 18,000 police departments and even some from abroad convene for product demos, discussions, parties, and awards. I went along to see how artificial intelligence was being discussed, and the message to police chiefs seemed crystal clear: If your department is slow to adopt AI, fix that now. The future of policing will rely on it in all its forms. In the event's expo hall, the vendors (of which there were more than 600) offered a glimpse into the ballooning industry of police-tech suppliers. Some had little to do with AI--booths showcased body armor, rifles, and prototypes of police-branded Cybertrucks, and others displayed new types of gloves promising to protect officers from needles during searches. But one needed only to look to where the largest crowds gathered to understand that AI was the major draw.

A Nashville woman was heard screaming for help by witnesses before she was found dead – police were able to track her alleged killer down using dashcam footage from a helpful civilian and a detective who had worked a case involving his twin. Last week, the Metro Nashville Police Department announced the arrest of 29-year-old Paul Park in connection with the death of 34-year-old Alyssa Lokits. The woman was exercising on the Mill Creek Greenway trail in Nashville on Monday, Oct. 14. Security cameras show Park allegedly emerging from between two parked vehicles and "following her at a brisk pace," the department wrote in a press release. After the two left the view of the camera, witnesses heard a woman scream "Help! Then, police said, the witnesses heard gunfire. Paul Park, 39, was arrested by the Metro Nashville Police Department on Oct. 15 in the death of Alyssa Lokits. Park was seen a short while later with scratches on his arms and blood on his clothing as he returned to his gray BMW sedan. Detectives didn't get a break in the case until a local resident provided them with dashcam footage, which showed part of Park's license plate and a clearer image of his face. A homicide detective who reviewed the footage recognized Park as the identical twin brother from a suicide case that she had worked in December 2021, CBS News reported. "I pray that we don't have an incident where we don't have a dashcam, or we don't have someone helping us like we had in this case," MNPD Chief John Drake said at a press conference. "I'm so thankful that our people got on this – we need technology." Even without the helpful civilian's footage, new technology pioneered by artificial intelligence software can help police investigate cases like the Nashville killing. Veritone is one of the companies spearheading that movement. The license plate of Paul Park's gray BMW sedan wasn't captured on surveillance footage – but thanks to a partial license plate number captured by a hiker's dashcam, police were able to arrest the accused killer. Veritone Track, one of several functions in a suite of services for law enforcement, uses artificial intelligence to run one photo or video of a vehicle – like the video captured on the park's surveillance footage – against stoplight cameras, body-worn cameras and other municipal surveillance footage available to police to find a match. "Both federal and local law enforcement have a major data problem," Veritone CEO Ryan Steelberg told Fox News Digital. "They are now capturing body camera [footage] and dashcams.

Police across the United States are increasingly relying on emerging technologies to make their jobs more efficient. In their daily work, they are using drones, license plate readers, body cameras and gunshot detection systems to reduce injury and bodily harm. The move comes as some law enforcement agencies are struggling with retention and hiring during the pandemic, when hundreds of cops in cities including Los Angeles and New York were sidelined because of the spread of the coronavirus. As police departments determine which technologies to adopt, they are also grappling with growing concerns about privacy that these technologies bring and potential complications they could create for officers on the job.

In 2019, the border town of Chula Vista, about 15 minutes from Tijuana, became California's first " Welcoming City," highlighting the city's financial and educational opportunities for immigrants. It's also one of the nation's most surveilled cities, where the police department uses license plate readers, drones, and body cameras to track residents and has explored facial-recognition technology. Now, those distinctions are clashing, as residents and activists accuse city leaders of "betraying" immigrant residents by permitting federal immigration authorities to access data from license plate readers. That's sparked a citywide movement questioning the city's police department, its surveillance apparatus, and its relationship with residents and immigration enforcement. Since 2015, the Chula Vista Police Department has quietly amassed surveillance tools as part of a smart city approach to policing.

Over the past months, federal law enforcement has used a wide variety of surveillance technologies to track down rioters who participated in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol building – demonstrating rising surveillance across the nation. Recent news coverage of the riot has largely focused on facial recognition – and how private citizens and local law enforcement officials have conducted their own facial recognition investigations in an attempt to assist the FBI with the help of social media. But charging documents reveal that the FBI has relied on a variety of other technologies, including license plate readers, police body cameras and cellphone tracking. And civil rights watchdogs like the ACLU are concerned that the same technologies used to surveil the rioters could impede protesters exercising their first amendment rights. The Capitol riot was an exceptional event – marking the first time in centuries that insurrectionists breached the center of the US federal government.

In January, when New York's Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act went into effect, the City of New York Police Department was suddenly forced to detail the tools it had long kept from public view. But instead of giving New Yorkers transparency, the NYPD gave error-filled, boilerplate statements that hide almost everything of value. Almost none of the policies list specific vendors, surveillance tool models, or information-sharing practices. The department's facial recognition policy says it can share data "pursuant to on-going criminal investigations, civil litigation, and disciplinary proceedings," a standard so broad it's largely meaningless. This marks the greatest test yet of Community Control of Police Surveillance (CCOPS), a growing effort to ensure that the public can take back control over the decisions of how communities are surveilled, deciding whether tools like facial recognition, drones, and predictive policing are acceptable for their neighborhoods.

This article is part of the Policing and Technology Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the relationship between law enforcement, police reform, and technology. On Friday, Nov. 20, at 1 p.m. Eastern, Future Tense will co-host "Technology, Policing, and Earning the Public Trust," an online event about the role of technology in law enforcement reform. This summer, when officials in a few cities started using facial recognition software to identify protesters, many cried foul. Those objections turned ironic when protesters used facial recognition to identify police officers who had covered their badges or nameplates during protests. Powerful technology beloved by police had become a tool for accountability: David defeats Goliath.

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.

The New York City Council today voted in favor of the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, a bill that requires the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to disclose their use of surveillance technologies. The POST Act also mandates that the NYPD develop policies on how it deploys those tools, as well as establish oversight of the department's surveillance programs to ensure they remain compliant. The passage of the POST Act, a three-year-old piece of legislation written with input from local activist organization Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), comes as cities around the country reexamine law enforcement policies following widespread demonstrations against abuse. Residents and activists on Tuesday urged the Detroit City Council to reject a contract that would extend the city police's use of facial recognition technology. On Wednesday, racial justice and civil liberties groups called on members of the U.S. Congress to end funding for surveillance technology law enforcement is using to spy on demonstrators.

Soon it will be impossible to cover up your face and hide your identity as you engage in a criminal activity, thanks to up-and-coming facial recognition technology. The bad news is, you won't be able to hide in plain view either, just to protect your privacy. As reported by the UK's Daily Mail, the technology under development has already progressed far enough to virtually "unmask" people in most situations. The Disguised Face Identification (DFI) system employs an AI network as it maps facial features hidden behind scarves, head gear, and even fake beards and mustaches to identify people. No doubt the system can be integrated with criminal databases so that flagging of wanted people can be done instantaneously; in fact, such systems already exist for automobiles.