The Rapid Expansion of AI Surveillance: What You Need to Know
AI surveillance is increasing at a rapid pace around the world. 75 countries employ them lawfully and unlawfully. The East Asia/Pacific, Americas, and the Middle East/North Africa regions are robust adopters of these tools. Even liberal democracies in Europe have installed automated border controls, predictive policing, “safe cities”, and facial recognition systems.
China is the biggest supplier of these technologies which can be found in 63+ countries. Huawei alone is responsible for providing AI surveillance technology to at least fifty countries and its leadership has strong ties with the Chinese government. Chinese product pitches are often accompanied by soft loans to encourage governments — in Kenya, Laos, Mongolia, and more — to purchase their equipment.
Liberal democracies are major users of AI surveillance — 51 percent of advanced democracies deploy AI surveillance systems. In contrast, 37 percent of closed autocratic states, 41 percent of electoral autocratic/competitive autocratic states, and 41 percent of electoral democracies/illiberal democracies deploy AI surveillance technology.
Liberal democratic governments are aggressively using AI tools to police borders, apprehend potential criminals, monitor citizens for bad behavior, and pull out suspected terrorists from crowds.
On the U.S.-Mexico border, an array of hi-tech companies provide advanced surveillance equipment. Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems has built dozens of towers in Arizona to spot people as far as 7.5 miles away. This technology was first perfected to build a “smart fence” to separate Jerusalem from West Bank.
Another company, Anduril Industries, “has developed towers that feature a laser-enhanced camera, radar and a communications system” that scans a two-mile radius to detect motion. Captured images are analyzed using AI to pick out humans from wildlife and other moving objects.
European democracies mainly acquire these technologies to control migration and track terrorist threats while countries like Egypt or Kazakhstan use them to keep a lid on internal dissent and activist movements, though the technologies involved are similar.
The three main AI surveillance tools are smart/safe city platforms, facial recognition systems, and smart policing. “Safe cities” are cities with sensors that transmit real-time data. They include police body cameras connected to intelligent command centers for facial recognition to ensure public safety. This has been implemented in Malaysia by the company Yitu.
Facial recognition systems are used to match live or stored footage of individuals with images from databases. Some systems aggregate crowd trends and some conduct facial sentiment analysis. Smart policing involves using algorithmic analysis for the prediction of future crimes.
Between 2014 and 2018, the facial recognition software got 20 times better at searching a database to find a matching photograph, and the failure rate dropped from 4% to 0.2%.
The European Union is testing a technology called iBorderCtrl in three countries — Greece, Hungary, and Latvia — to screen migrants at border crossings. Individuals are asked questions about their countries of origin and circumstances of departure. The answers are then evaluated by an AI-based lie-detecting system. Travelers found to have honestly answered questions are given a code allowing them to cross. The technology is based on “affect recognition science,” which purports to read facial expressions and infer emotional states in order to render legal judgments or policy decisions.
AI surveillance is also actively employed by large tech companies. In early 2019, Amazon disclosed that thousands of its workers listened to conversations recorded by Echo smart speakers. In some cases, its workers debated whether recordings of possible crimes should be turned over to law enforcement authorities.
Amazon analyzed these recordings without the permission of users. Given the robust transcription technologies and workers to label the data, Amazon has a voluminous database on user conversations and more which it can use for mass and targetted surveillance.
Similarly, it came to light that Google and Facebook contractors have been regularly listening to recordings between their platforms and individual consumers. Tesla Model S has a system that spots, tracks, and stores license plates and faces over time in order to prevent car theft.
We have adapted to a world where surveillance is commonplace, privacy is diminished, and the individual has no ownership of their data.
I mention information from this paper.
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