Spread across four computer monitors arranged in a grid, a blue and green interface shows the location of more than 50 different surveillance cameras. Ordinarily, these cameras and others like them might be disparate, their feeds only available to their respective owners: a business, a government building, a resident and their doorbell camera. But the screens, overlooking a pair of long conference tables, bring them all together at once, allowing law enforcement to tap into cameras owned by different entities around the entire town all at once.
This is a demonstration of Fusus, an AI-powered system that is rapidly springing up across small town America and major cities alike. Fusus’ product not only funnels live feeds from usually siloed cameras into one central location, but also adds the ability to scan for people wearing certain clothes, carrying a particular bag, or look for a certain vehicle.
404 Media has obtained a cache of internal emails, presentations, memos, photos, and more which provide insight into how Fusus teams up with police departments to sell its surveillance technology. All around the country, city councils are debating whether they want to have a system that qualitatively changes what surveillance cameras mean for a town’s residents and public agencies. While many have adopted Fusus, others have pushed back, and refused to have the hardware and software installed in their neighborhoods.
In some ways, Fusus is deploying smart camera technology that historically has been used in places like South Africa, where experts warned about it creating an ever present blanket of surveillance. Now, tech with some of the same capabilities is being used across small town America.
Rather than selling cameras themselves, Fusus’ hardware and software latches onto existing installations, which can include government-owned surveillance cameras as well as privately owned cameras at businesses and homes. It turns dumb cameras into smart ones. “In essence, the Fusus solution puts a brain into every camera connected with the system,” one memorandum obtained by 404 Media reads.
How far can this type of intrusive surveillance go and still have the response of your average citizen be “I have nothing to hid”. What happened to the America full of private people who greatly valued that privacy? The idea of this software grabbing live footage from city owned cameras all the way to live cell phone feeds, to door bell cameras, AND managing all those fields with AI setup to look for certain clothing or objects.
And putting all that power into the hands of fallible humans in the form of police. This has already been abused, I guarantee it, tracking an ex, racial profiling, you name it, this level of power isn’t something we should stomach anyone having let alone the police.
The answer. Privatised surveillance. Of course if anything like setting up ai cameras to monitor people was an official government act they would be uproar so instead they get private companies to make deals with each local municipality. We all know no one really pays that much attention to what happens locally anymore. We are so tuned into the bigger picture that we fall the register the enemy at the gate. We warned about face scans and the constant surveillance in China yet it seems to be quietly becoming a reality in the US as well.
Capitalism is so engrained in us that we never stop to think about what putting our safety into the hands of for profit companies even entails.
Nixon, Reagan, Bush I & II, Trump.
You left out Clinton, Obama, and Biden, as if the security state isn’t a bipartisan issue, just like neoliberal economic policies.
Yeah! Doesn’t matter what side you’re on, politicians in general love privacy for the masses the same way gøøgl€ loves ad blockers for yt.
Now just combine this with cell phone tracking data and we’ll know where everyone is, where they’re going, what theyre doing, what they think, how much money they have, their political opinions, what they’re buying, who they’re fucking. It’ll be a crime free utopia!