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US surveillance technology firm targets UK police forces and councils [1]

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Date: 2023-09

A US tech firm has been privately lobbying UK councils and police forces to scale up their surveillance using an AI-powered platform used against Black Lives Matter protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, openDemocracy can reveal.

At least one London council is already trialling the software as a result of approaches by the company, Fusus, which claims to be “the most widely used and trusted real-time crime center platform in US public safety”.

Fusus has been attempting to expand into the UK, opening an office in London’s Canary Wharf in March this year and hiring former officers from the Met to approach councils and police forces. It has approached Tower Hamlets and Hackney borough councils and the Met, City of London and Merseyside police forces to sell products that integrate CCTV and surveillance networks, according to Freedom of Information requests.

Kensington and Chelsea Council and Merton Council also confirmed they had also been in contact with Fusus when approached by openDemocracy, with Kensington and Chelsea running a 60-day trial starting earlier this month.

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The firm’s flagship product is a surveillance hub known as a “real-time crime centre” (RTCC) that links up video and other surveillance technologies to a central feed. At the moment public CCTV feeds are monitored by council and police employees, but the Fusus RTCC system helps automate surveillance: police and other authorities can incorporate sophisticated, automated analytical software to analyse multiple real-time sources of footage and use this data to run predictive policing software, streamlining what could otherwise take officers days or weeks.

There is also the option of viewing the streams remotely, or even on officers’ phones, using the ‘FususOPS’ app.

Critics have warned that the use of tech like Fusus is a step towards a “surveillance state”.

Emmanuelle Andrews, policy and campaigns manager at human rights group Liberty, said: “The expansion of mass surveillance has no place in any rights-respecting democracy. We should all be able to live our lives without the threat of being watched, tracked and monitored by the police or those in power.

“The increasing use of this sort of technology in policing embeds oppression, threatens our rights and liberties, and will change society as we know it. The government must ban use of this sort of technology by the police.”

Big Brother Watch’s senior advocacy officer Madeleine Stone told openDemocracy: “Local authorities and police forces should reject lobbying efforts from companies that profit from building surveillance states.”

So far, only Kensington and Chelsea Council has confirmed its interest in working with Fusus. A spokesperson told openDemocracy the council’s housing department is trialling Fusus for 60 days and “exploring methods that in future could link the cameras on our housing estates back to a central point so it’s easier for us to review and download images when investigating reports made by our communities on issues that affect them, such as anti-social behaviour”.

They say the Fusus hardware will only be connected to cameras that cover “communal spaces” and entrances to housing, and will not watch public space. It is not known whether residents had been informed about the trial.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/real-time-crime-centre-police-surveillance-technology-fusus/

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