In the trade-off between privacy and security, it helps to know the extent of your local surveillance infrastructure. There are now easy ways to find out.
I didn’t tell anyone I was meeting Michelle Dahl, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a watchdog group. But by the time I greet her in Brooklyn, New York, the system knows we’re together.
“It’s kind of invisible if you’re not looking for it,” says Dahl, pointing up to a lamppost, where two tiny cameras labelled New York City Police Department hide in black plastic domes.
They’re part of the NYPD’s massive AI surveillance platform: the Domain Awareness System (DAS). “Every police officer in the city can access it on their phones and pull up a profile of basically anyone walking around,” she says.
The platform connects more than 80,000 cameras with drones, social media data, even systems that follow cars when you drive to another state. Dahl says it can unveil who I’ve seen and everywhere I’ve been in the last week. My whole life: tracked.
Every day, across the US, your life is also being recorded by a growing system of mass surveillance that reaches far deeper than many of us may realise. Controversy around an American surveillance company called Flock Safety exploded in recent months, but it’s only one player in a giant industry.
Excerpt from the article: I went looking for surveillance cameras in my neighbourhood: I found so many more than I thought.
