Oracle Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison, the world's second-richest man, recently revealed how his company could provide authorities with the technological tools to better surveil citizens and socially manipulate those who unwillingly live their lives in front of cameras.
“We are constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on so citizens will be on their best behavior,” Ellison said.
said “It's the AI that's looking at the camera,” he said last week at a conference of financial analysts for database and cloud computing companies.
After discussing the expansion and adoption of surveillance systems in the healthcare and education sectors, Ellison raised the issue of law enforcement applications and police body cameras.
“The truth is, we don't actually turn it off.”
“We've completely redesigned our body cameras,” the billionaire said. “They're always on. You don't have to turn them on and off.”
Whether the officer is having lunch with a friend or on the toilet, Oracle never closes his eyes.
Ellison noted that if an officer needs a moment of privacy to go to the bathroom, for example, he must notify Oracle.
“We turn it off. Actually, we don't really turn it off. What we do is we record it so that nobody can see,” Ellison said. “Nobody can see that recording without a court order. You get the privacy that you asked for… But if there is a court order, we will make a decision. We want to look at what are called bathroom breaks.”
“We send the video to our headquarters and our AI is constantly monitoring the video,” Oracle's CTO continued.
If the AI spots any behavior it has been trained to deem suspicious, it will flag the action and alert the appropriate authorities.
Ellison suggested that by building what is effectively a high-tech panopticon, police officers and citizens alike would be more likely to behave as prescribed by custom and law, “because we're constantly recording, monitoring and recording everything that's going on.”
Ellison suggested that this digital eye system, monitoring cars, drones and people, amounts to “surveillance.”
The tech mogul has maintained that these applications are harmless, meant to curb police brutality, but Oracle recently gave reason to suspect they could be misused.
In July, Oracle agreed to pay $115 million to settle a lawsuit that accused it of disregarding people's privacy by collecting their data and selling it to third parties.
Reported Reuters.
The plaintiffs allege that Oracle created unauthorized “digital documents” about hundreds of millions of people and sold them to marketing companies and other organizations.
Critics responded to Ellison's comments online, expressing concern that such apps would almost certainly bring about a communist China-style surveillance state in the West – something that has already begun to take hold in the UK.
One of the most surveilled countries On Earth.
“It's rare that someone isn't watching.”
Fraser Sampson, former Biometrics and Surveillance Commissioner at the UK Home Office
said Before his term ended last year, he argued in The Guardian that AI was accelerating the UK's move towards a “360-degree surveillance” society across public and private sectors.
“Back in 2010, a lawyer used the phrase '360-degree surveillance' and I think that's absolutely right. There is very little that isn't being monitored by someone. The problem is that almost everything is being monitored on your personal devices, and now we share that with police, nation states, foreign governments, whoever, whether we want it or not,” Sampson said.
“Back then, you had to do it by humans, which didn't matter because no one would survive 10 minutes. But now with AI editing, you can do it. Suddenly you have that ocean to tap into,” the watchdog group added.
The UK is ostensibly worsening under the current Labour government. Enlarge Use of live facial recognition technology.
While some lament the expansion of the Western surveillance state, so-called Blade Runner activists have in recent years been working to destroy public and private cameras.
include Low emission cameras.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censorship and sign up for our newsletter to receive stories like this directly to your inbox. Register here!
