The Middle East has developed a technology used to spy on citizens, reports revealed.
Just this month, the New York Times published a report, claiming that the Middle East has a brain wave reader that can detect lies.
According to the report, the small cameras could be secretly placed inside vape pens and disposable coffee cups and could also zoom in more than a kilometer to capture faces and license plates.
During the recent police conference last March in Dubai, the said technologies for the security forces were up for sale.
“Far from the eyes of the general public, the event provided a rare look at what tools are now available to law enforcement around the world: better and harder-to-detect surveillance, facial recognition software that automatically tracks individuals across cities and computers to break into phones,” the New York Post reported.
“Advances in artificial intelligence, drones and facial recognition have created an increasingly global police surveillance business. Israeli hacking software, American investigation tools and Chinese computer vision algorithms can all be bought and mixed together to make a snooping cocktail of startling effectiveness,” the report added.
Advances in artificial intelligence, drones and facial recognition have created an increasingly global police surveillance business. In the Middle East, these advances and other emerging technologies have become part of everyday policing. https://t.co/1SqVUQ7DTZ— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 30, 2023
During the conference, the tools used for mass mass surveillance were highlighted and reports that countries from the Middle East such as the United Arab Emirates have increased their spending on the said technology were leaked.
“The rising use of the technologies signals an era of policing based as much on software, data and code as on officers and weaponry, raising questions about the effects on people’s privacy and how political power is wielded,” the report added.
In a statement released by Daragh Murray, a senior lecturer of law at Queen Mary University in London who has studied police use of technology, it was revealed that “a lot of surveillance could ostensibly be benign or used to improve a city.”
“But the flip side of the coin is it can give you incredible insight into people’s everyday lives. That can have an unintended chilling effect or be a tool for actual repression.” Murray added.
Maj. Gen. Khalid Alrazooqi, the Dubai Police’s general director of A.I. also claimed that “nowadays, the police force, they don’t think about the guns or weapons that they’re carrying. You’re looking for the tools, the technology.”
