AI, brain scans and cameras: The spread of police surveillance tech
Advances in artificial intelligence, drones and facial recognition have created an increasingly global police surveillance business
Published: 03:03 PM,Mar 31,2023 | EDITED : 07:03 PM,Mar 31,2023
An attendee interacts with a display at a booth for Presight AI, a firm based in the UAE, that sells software that can identify people, store data about their appearance and track their routes, during a police conference in Dubai.
A brain wave reader that can detect lies. Miniaturised cameras that sit inside vape pens and disposable coffee cups. Massive video cameras that zoom in more than a kilometer to capture faces and licence plates.
At a police conference in Dubai in March, new technologies for the security forces of the future were up for sale. Far from the eyes of the general public, the event provided a rare look at what tools are now available to law enforcement around the world: better and harder-to-detect surveillance, facial recognition software that automatically tracks individuals across cities and computers to break into phones.
Advances in artificial intelligence, drones and facial recognition have created an increasingly global police surveillance business.
Israeli hacking software, American investigation tools and Chinese computer vision algorithms can all be bought and mixed together to make a snooping cocktail of startling effectiveness.
Fueled by a surge of spending from Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE, the conference’s host and an aggressive adopter of next-generation security technologies, the event pointed to how tools of mass surveillance once believed to be widespread only in China are proliferating.
The rising use of the technologies signals an era of policing based as much on software, data and code as officers and weaponry, raising questions about the effects on people’s privacy and how political power is wielded.
“A lot of surveillance could ostensibly be benign or used to improve a city,” said Daragh Murray, a senior lecturer of law at Queen Mary University in London who has studied police use of technology.
“But the flip side of the coin is it can give you incredible insight into people’s everyday lives. That can have an unintended chilling effect or be a tool for actual repression.”
The gold rush was evident at a convention center in the heart of downtown Dubai, where uniformed police representatives from around the world browsed drones that could be launched and powered up remotely. Chinese camera makers showed software to identify when crowds gather. American companies like Dell and Cisco had booths offering police services. Cellebrite, an Israeli maker of systems to break into mobile phones, exhibited inside a “government zone” blocked off from the rest of the conference.
Other companies sold facial recognition eyeglasses and sentiment analysis software, in which an algorithm determines a person’s mood from facial expressions. Some products, like a Segway with a rifle mount, pushed the limits of practicality.
“Nowadays, the police force, they don’t think about the guns or weapons that they’re carrying,” said Maj Gen Khalid Alrazooqi, the Dubai Police’s general director of AI. “You’re looking for the tools, the technology.”
With its deep pockets, serious security challenges and a government, the UAE, has become a case study in the potential, and risks, of such policing technologies. The tools can help stop crime and terror attacks but can also become an undemocratic buttress of political power.
Under the leadership of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, often referred to by his initials MBZ, Emirati authorities have surveilled critics and activists.
One tech firm based in the UAE with ties to the country’s leadership, Presight AI, sells software nearly identical to products that are popular with the Chinese police. At the conference, its software used cameras and AI to identify people, store data about their appearance and track their routes as they wandered the event.
A lack of transparency and oversight for the way surveillance technologies are used opens up the potential for abuse, said Marc O Jones, author of the book “Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East” and a professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar.
“The region has become so securitised, and under MBZ, the UAE has become so focused on security there’s almost this fetishisation of technology,” he said.
Cameras are especially prevalent in the two largest emirates, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Dubai, which is flashier and more freewheeling, has cameras tucked away in unassuming corners. In Abu Dhabi, the more conservative center of political power, cameras dominate the cityscape. Grey metal towers that support them shaped like T’s and L’s hang over roads at predictable intervals.
Alrazooqi said in an interview that the cameras were part of a yearslong campaign to become a global leader in police technology — even though the emirate, which has a population of about 3.5 million, is known for low crime.
In recent years, Emirati officials visited police departments and companies in China, Europe and the United States for ideas. The consulting companies KPMG and Gartner were hired to help with the process, Alrazooqi said. Dubai bought facial recognition systems from Chinese companies including Hikvision and Huawei.
KPMG, Gartner, Huawei and Hikvision declined to comment.
“We pick what is the best practice in each country and to try to perfect and inject it in the system that we have,” Alrazooqi said. He added that the “Chinese are the best” at computer vision and facial recognition. - The New York Times.
Paul Mozur
The writer is a correspondent focused on tech and geopolitics in Asia
Adam Satariano
The writer is a technology correspondent based in Europe
At a police conference in Dubai in March, new technologies for the security forces of the future were up for sale. Far from the eyes of the general public, the event provided a rare look at what tools are now available to law enforcement around the world: better and harder-to-detect surveillance, facial recognition software that automatically tracks individuals across cities and computers to break into phones.
Advances in artificial intelligence, drones and facial recognition have created an increasingly global police surveillance business.
Israeli hacking software, American investigation tools and Chinese computer vision algorithms can all be bought and mixed together to make a snooping cocktail of startling effectiveness.
Fueled by a surge of spending from Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE, the conference’s host and an aggressive adopter of next-generation security technologies, the event pointed to how tools of mass surveillance once believed to be widespread only in China are proliferating.
The rising use of the technologies signals an era of policing based as much on software, data and code as officers and weaponry, raising questions about the effects on people’s privacy and how political power is wielded.
“A lot of surveillance could ostensibly be benign or used to improve a city,” said Daragh Murray, a senior lecturer of law at Queen Mary University in London who has studied police use of technology.
“But the flip side of the coin is it can give you incredible insight into people’s everyday lives. That can have an unintended chilling effect or be a tool for actual repression.”
The gold rush was evident at a convention center in the heart of downtown Dubai, where uniformed police representatives from around the world browsed drones that could be launched and powered up remotely. Chinese camera makers showed software to identify when crowds gather. American companies like Dell and Cisco had booths offering police services. Cellebrite, an Israeli maker of systems to break into mobile phones, exhibited inside a “government zone” blocked off from the rest of the conference.
Other companies sold facial recognition eyeglasses and sentiment analysis software, in which an algorithm determines a person’s mood from facial expressions. Some products, like a Segway with a rifle mount, pushed the limits of practicality.
“Nowadays, the police force, they don’t think about the guns or weapons that they’re carrying,” said Maj Gen Khalid Alrazooqi, the Dubai Police’s general director of AI. “You’re looking for the tools, the technology.”
With its deep pockets, serious security challenges and a government, the UAE, has become a case study in the potential, and risks, of such policing technologies. The tools can help stop crime and terror attacks but can also become an undemocratic buttress of political power.
Under the leadership of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, often referred to by his initials MBZ, Emirati authorities have surveilled critics and activists.
One tech firm based in the UAE with ties to the country’s leadership, Presight AI, sells software nearly identical to products that are popular with the Chinese police. At the conference, its software used cameras and AI to identify people, store data about their appearance and track their routes as they wandered the event.
A lack of transparency and oversight for the way surveillance technologies are used opens up the potential for abuse, said Marc O Jones, author of the book “Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East” and a professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar.
“The region has become so securitised, and under MBZ, the UAE has become so focused on security there’s almost this fetishisation of technology,” he said.
Cameras are especially prevalent in the two largest emirates, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Dubai, which is flashier and more freewheeling, has cameras tucked away in unassuming corners. In Abu Dhabi, the more conservative center of political power, cameras dominate the cityscape. Grey metal towers that support them shaped like T’s and L’s hang over roads at predictable intervals.
Alrazooqi said in an interview that the cameras were part of a yearslong campaign to become a global leader in police technology — even though the emirate, which has a population of about 3.5 million, is known for low crime.
In recent years, Emirati officials visited police departments and companies in China, Europe and the United States for ideas. The consulting companies KPMG and Gartner were hired to help with the process, Alrazooqi said. Dubai bought facial recognition systems from Chinese companies including Hikvision and Huawei.
KPMG, Gartner, Huawei and Hikvision declined to comment.
“We pick what is the best practice in each country and to try to perfect and inject it in the system that we have,” Alrazooqi said. He added that the “Chinese are the best” at computer vision and facial recognition. - The New York Times.
Paul Mozur
The writer is a correspondent focused on tech and geopolitics in Asia
Adam Satariano
The writer is a technology correspondent based in Europe