‘Scary and chilling’: AI surveillance takes US prisons by storm

The prisoners’ phone at a prison in France. Suffolk County is among dozens of county jails and state prisons in seven US states including major metro areas such as Houston, Texas, and Birmingham, Alabama, that Leo says have so far implemented the Verus system to monitor inmates’ calls. — AFP

LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON: When the sheriff in Suffolk County, New York, requested US$700,000 (RM2.92mil) from the US government for an artificial intelligence system to eavesdrop on prison phone conversations, his office called it a key tool in fighting gang-related and violent crime.

But the county jail ended up listening to calls involving a much wider range of subjects – scanning as many as 600,000 minutes per month, according to public records from the county obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.