BOSTON, Massachusetts (PNN) - April 17, 2014 - Following the Boston Marathon bombings almost one year ago, the Boston terrorist pig thug cop department started looking toward more high-tech means of securing the city against future attacks. It found the solution in the form of an artificially intelligent, self-learning surveillance network that now watches the entire city, and all of its inhabitants.
The Texas-based Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. (BRS Labs) headed by former Secret Service special agent John Frazzini has a reputation for developing advanced, AI-based surveillance platforms. The system the company built for Boston after the bombings is on the bleeding edge of such technology, and not only watches and analyzes human behavior, but learns from it to identify suspicious or abnormal activity.
It actually predicts threats by itself, completely free of additional human programming, guidance or monitoring.
“Our system will figure out things you never thought of looking for,” said BRS Labs chief science officer Wesley Cobb. “You never thought to look for a car driving backwards up the entrance of a parking garage, for example. Our system will find that and alert on it, because it’s different from what it usually sees. It’s taught itself what to look for.”
AISight’s analysis of human behavior based on surveillance footage “promises to change the way humans conduct their surveillance of other humans,” and is already being adopted in Chicago and Washington. The company is also working on a similar system for organizers of the World Cup.
The system starts out by simply monitoring its environment, which is recorded through a closed-circuit television network of high-quality surveillance cameras spread throughout the city, and builds up a profile of normal behavior.
After accumulating enough data, AISight draws upon its “artificial neural networks,” which are designed to mimic analytical human brain functions, to recognize, learn, and permanently register abnormal behavior without any additional pre or post-programming.
The core of the system itself needs surprisingly little installation and additional hardware, and can be attached to huge, sprawling networks of outdated cameras already present in any city. After a few days of hardware and software installation, AISight can begin autonomously building an ever-changing knowledge base of activity seen through every camera on a video network.
“We can recognize a precursor pattern that could be associated with a crime before it happens,” said Cobb. “In a lot of cases, you can see someone casing the joint, poking around the back of buildings, going where they shouldn’t be.”
Though BRS Labs states it is ”concerned about the privacy rights of individuals everywhere,” its easy to imagine the potential for abuse such systems could create, especially following the year-long leaks of highly classified bulk surveillance programs conducted by the Amerikan Gestapo National Security Agency division.
Such programs have been justified and staunchly defended in the name of national security and born out of incidents like the Boston Bombing. However, numerous government officials, congressional representatives, national security experts, and even the White House have admitted that such surveillance has done little or nothing to prevent potential terrorist events.