DHS Needs a Fleet of AI-Powered Surveillance Vans

The US Division of Homeland Safety is searching for to develop a brand new cell surveillance platform that fuses synthetic intelligence, radar, high-powered cameras, and wi-fi networking right into a single system, in response to federal contracting data reviewed by WIRED. The know-how would mount on 4×4 automobiles able to reaching distant areas and reworking into rolling, autonomous commentary towers, extending the attain of border surveillance far past its present mounted websites.

The proposed system surfaced Friday after US Customs and Border Safety quietly printed a pre-solicitation discover for what it’s calling a Modular Cell Surveillance System, or M2S2. The itemizing contains draft technical paperwork, information necessities, and design aims.

DHS didn’t reply to a request for remark.

If M2S2 performs as described, border patrol brokers might park their automobiles, increase a telescoping mast, and inside minutes begin detecting movement a number of miles away. The system would rely closely on so-called pc imaginative and prescient, a form of “synthetic intelligence” that permits machines to interpret visible information body by body and detect shapes, warmth signatures, and motion patterns. Such algorithms—beforehand developed for use in battle drones—are skilled on 1000’s if not hundreds of thousands of pictures to differentiate between folks, animals, and automobiles.

The event of M2S2 comes amid the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants throughout the US. As a part of this push, which has sparked widespread protests and condemnation for the brutal techniques utilized by immigration authorities, Congress boosted DHS’s discretionary funds authority to roughly $65 billion. The GOP’s “One Huge Lovely Invoice” allocates over $160 billion for immigration enforcement and border measures—most of it directed to DHS—with the funds scheduled to be distributed over a number of years. The administration has sought to extend DHS funding by roughly 65 p.c, proposing the most important growth within the company’s historical past to fund new border enforcement, detention capability, and immigration surveillance initiatives.

Based on paperwork reviewed by WIRED, places of objects focused by the system could be pinpointed on digital maps inside 250 toes of their true location (with a stretch objective of round 50 toes) and transmit that information throughout an app referred to as TAK—a government-built tactical mapping platform developed by the US Protection Division to assist troops coordinate actions and keep away from pleasant fireplace.

DHS envisions two modes of operation: one with an agent on web site and one other the place the vehicles sit principally unattended. Within the latter case, the car’s onboard AI would conduct the surveillance and ship distant operators alerts when it detects exercise. Missions are to be logged begin to end, with video, maps, and sensor information retained for no less than 15 days, locked in opposition to deletion “below any circumstances.”