With a few clicks, this “co-appearance” or “correlation analysis” software can find anyone who has appeared on surveillance frames within a few minutes of the gray-haired male over the last month, strip out those who may have been near him a time or two, and zero in on a man who has appeared 14 times. The software can instantaneously mark potential interactions between the two men, now deemed likely associates, on a searchable calendar.
'Co-appearance' or 'correlation analysis' software can identify those you spend time with by analysing people who appear with you on surveillance frames. — dpa The Los Angeles Police Department ended a predictive policing program, known as PredPol, in 2020 amid criticism that it was not stopping crime and led to heavier policing of Black and Latino neighbourhoods. The program used AI to analyse vast troves of data, including suspected gang affiliations, in an effort to predict in real time where property crimes might happen.
Markey plans to reintroduce a bill in the coming weeks that would halt the use of facial recognition and biometric technologies by federal law enforcement and require local and state governments to ban them as a condition of winning federal grants. Four agencies that share the San Jose transit station used in Vintra’s presentation denied that their cameras were used to make the company’s video.
“There are limitations. It’s not a magic technology,” he said. “It requires precise inputs for good outputs.” The Sacramento Police Department said in an email that it uses Vintra software “sparingly, if at all” but would not specify whether it had ever used the co-appearance feature. Jay Stanley, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who first highlighted Vintra’s video presentation last year in a blog post, said he is not surprised some companies and departments are cagey about its use. In his experience, police departments often deploy new technology “without telling, let alone asking, permission of democratic overseers like city councils.”