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Millions of New Yorkers have been unconsciously watched since 9/11. In recent years, numerous reports have described mass surveillance programs in the name of national security. Although these operations are now more widely known, their operation and what they eventually led to remained opaque. Today it is Intercept published a paper describing a partnership between NYPD and IBM following the agency's CCTV program.
Essentially, in the years following the Twin Tower attack, New York City installed thousands of street cameras as part of its large-scale counterterrorism operation, but it was unclear exactly how the city was managing these attacks. images. It turns out that IBM helped.
According to the documents revealed by the InterceptAs well as interviews with people familiar with the operation, IBM has had access to thousands of images taken by these NYPD cameras. This data feed helped the technology giant to develop its video analysis software, which offered refined search options –including the ability to search images of people with a certain hair color, facial hair or skin tone. IBM did not comment on the Intercept about its use of these images, but the NYPD admitted to sharing the data with the company.
Although the revelation that the NYPD's mass has overseen the city for years is (depressingly) not surprising, the fact that the agency shares its terabytes of data with IBM is an interesting development. In addition, this partnership has led IBM to develop software that allows users to search for video sequences based on skin color. It basically means that racial profiling technology was created and developed by IBM with the help of the NYPD and millions of unsuspecting New Yorkers.
The company subsequently sold this software, which was used in places such as university campuses. As Fast Society Earlier this year, IBM informed law enforcement agencies interested in its Intelligent Video Analytics software about the program's ability to not only count people, but also to detect lies and bodies. things too.
And now that this partnership has been uncovered, civil liberties advocates worry about the secrecy of technology and how it could be used to profile thousands of ignorant citizens based on race.
You can read the entirety Intercept history here.
Update: IBM provided Fast Society with this statement:
IBM is committed to promoting and using new technologies responsibly and is recognized for its diversity and inclusion policies. These values explain why many programs are underway to better identify and address technological biases, including providing an annotated dataset for more than one million images to other companies. various data to form the AI systems. IBM would not bid on customer work that would allow ethnic bias.
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