Taser Will Use Police Body Camera Videos 'To Anticipate Criminal Activity' (theintercept.com) 76
Presto Vivace quotes a report from The Intercept: With an estimated one-third of departments using body cameras, police officers have been generating millions of hours of video footage. Taser stores terabytes of such video on Evidence.com, in private servers to which police agencies must continuously subscribe for a monthly fee. Data from these recordings is rarely analyzed for investigative purposes, though, and Taser -- which recently rebranded itself as a technology company and renamed itself "Axon" -- is hoping to change that. Taser has started to get into the business of making sense of its enormous archive of video footage by building an in-house "AI team." In February, the company acquired two computer vision startups, Dextro and Fossil Group Inc. Taser says the companies will allow agencies to automatically redact faces to protect privacy, extract important information, and detect emotions and objects -- all without human intervention. This will free officers from the grunt work of manually writing reports and tagging videos, a Taser spokesperson wrote in an email. "Our prediction for the next few years is that the process of doing paperwork by hand will begin to disappear from the world of law enforcement, along with many other tedious manual tasks." Analytics will also allow departments to observe historical patterns in behavior for officer training, the spokesperson added. "Police departments are now sitting on a vast trove of body-worn footage that gives them insight for the first time into which interactions with the public have been positive versus negative, and how individuals' actions led to it." But looking to the past is just the beginning: Taser is betting that its artificial intelligence tools might be useful not just to determine what happened, but to anticipate what might happen in the future.
Axon AI detected first post will be useless (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they can integrate this camera into a smart gun that automatically selects between lethal and non-lethal modes based on the how threatening the target appears...oh wait... [wikia.com]
Re: (Score:2)
... gun that automatically selects between lethal and non-lethal modes based on the how threatening the target appears...
Yeah, it looks at skin tone.../s
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, LOTS of possibilities (Score:5, Interesting)
>"But looking to the past is just the beginning: Taser is betting that its artificial intelligence tools might be useful not just to determine what happened, but to anticipate what might happen in the future."
Yep. And by tying in facial recognition and other AI, it will be possible to make all kinda of inferences and connections and store all kinds of data about what normal citizens are doing. Things that might have nothing to do with the reason they were interacting with the police. Tracking where people are/go, who they associate with, what they are wearing, what they might be carrying with them, what was in their vehicle, what was written on their hat, etc. Lots of possibilities that can be great for crime fighting and a nightmare for privacy and freedom...
And before someone says "but you have no expectation of privacy in public", I will counter with "but at no time in history was it possible to have perfect video and audio recollection of everything that is happening that could be stored indefinitely, shared with anyone, and analyzed and interpreted in a zillion ways."
Truly a double-edged sword if ever there was one.
Re: (Score:1)
What if AI starts making determinations or predictions based on race? Will it be shut down?
Re: Yep, LOTS of possibilities (Score:1)
Just wait until you get picked up for "looking like you might do something illegal"... Just as a precautionary measure.
Re: (Score:2)
Or arrest you for resisting arrest.
Re:Yep, LOTS of possibilities (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Why should the public be worried about the privacy & freedom of rapists, robbers and the like?"
Do you think these systems will be recording only rapists, robbers and the like? I suspect that at 90+% of the police interaction with the public results in no ticket, 98+% results in no arrest, and 99.5% in no charges (yep, I made up those numbers, but don't they sound reasonable?). There are a lot of innocent, normal people that will be caught up in this new web of surveillance. I don't think the bodycams are going to just erase everything that didn't result in a negative or law-breaking interaction. And even if that is what was claimed, how would we really know it is true?
Re: (Score:2)
Why should the public be worried about the privacy & freedom of rapists, robbers and the like? I mean, it's one thing to say that the cops shouldn't be able to dig up one person's life to find something they might be guilty of, but it's quite another to say that they have to bury their heads in the sand and avoid looking for criminals in broad daylight.
My my! A post that succeeds in both trolling liberal-minded people, and shilling for TLA's and corporations like Taser / Axon. That was very well done, Mister Asshole AC! Have you ever considered using your powers for good, rather than for evil?
Re: (Score:1)
Also, they could be dead wrong about who is and is not going to commit a crime. This could lead to the police harassing innocent people.
In fact, this thing could even be programmed to target dissidents, and use imaginary crimes as a defense.
That WILL happen, mark my words
Leave pre-crime to Phillip K Dick
Captcha: Attempts
Re: (Score:2)
>"Good thing most of the technology doesn't exist, is poorly conceived to the point of impossibility [...] but good luck teaching it the uh specific prejudices about those crimes you don't know you expect it to have."
While this is true NOW, the real issue is that if the data is being stored, it can be analyzed with improved systems in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, whatever. This is one of the main problems with the current mentality of just capturing everything and saving it. Storage systems get cheaper
Re: (Score:2)
And by tying in facial recognition and other AI, it will be possible to make all kinda of inferences and connections and store all kinds of data about what normal citizens are doing.
Anyone who suffers from Resting Bitchface had better stay home. http://www.urbandictionary.com... [urbandictionary.com]
"How do you know she is a witch?
"She looks like one!"
Great (Score:1)
"Officer. Am I being detained?" "It doesn't matter. My data analytics say your pointing a gun at me... Zap!"
Tazer Precrime unit! (Score:3, Insightful)
How do they know it's criminal? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Color-detection?
Stop resisting! (Score:4, Insightful)
"But officer, I'm pulled over with the engine off and my hands are on the steering wheel while my seat belt is still on."
"Forget that! My computer says you will attack me with a knife in under 30 seconds! Stop, resisting!"
"But officer."
Zap.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Tazer: [menacingly] Please put down your weapon. You have twenty seconds to comply.
Tazer: You now have fifteen seconds to comply.
Tazer: You are in direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9.
Tazer: You have five seconds to comply.
Citizen: Help...! Help me!
Tazer: Four... three... two... one... I am now authorized to use physical force!
(My apologies to ED)
This is so bad oon so many levels... (Score:2)
.
But from the headline... now we have AI shooting energized probes at people. This is going to end up in a bad place.
good! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
>> ... by police.
I doubt that. Very much.
Better idea. (Score:2)
Make it so that footage cannot be "lost" when it's an officer on trial.
oh, California, where art thou? (Score:2)
can a court order get data off of private servers (Score:2)
can a court order get data off of private servers if the local cops stop paying and the defendant requests it at trial?? can that be used an as get out jail free card?
Pro Cop Analysis (Score:1)
How can they use this to protect people? (Score:2)
Doubling down (Score:2)
So Taser, an already highly creepy company of dubious ethics, has decided to become an even creepier company and is changing their name to help hide who they are?
Sounds about normal.